
LIBRARYW^CONGRESS. 

ChapESsa Copyright No 

Shelt..,L_L2. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



HEREDITY. 

Being the second in a Series of four Booklets on 
Child Saving. 



by 

[. T. L? 



Rev. M. T. LAMB. 



State Superintendent of the " New Jersey Children's Home Society," and 

Author of "The Golden Bible." or k < The Book of Mormon— Is it 

from God ?" u The Great Commission.'' or Each Individual 

Christian's Obligation to Beach " Every Creature." 

'•The Value of a Child." 



TEEXTON, X. J. 
NAAE, DAY cfc XAAE, PRINTERS. 

1S98. 








"Entered according to act of Congress, in 1898, by 

M. T. LAMB, 

Tin the office of the Librarian of Congress, at] Washington, D. C. 



-2nd COPY 
*89a 







TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 

LC Control Number 




tmp96 030406 



PREFACE. 



First of all, an apology. When the first booklet, "The 
Value of a Child," was published over two years ago, the 
second in the series, on heredity, was promised in three 
months; and the expectation then was to complete a series of 
four booklets on Child Saving within a year. The very fav- 
orable reception given to the first number, "The Value of a 
Child," wherever read, the growing evidence of its helpful- 
ness and value, the almost invariable desire expressed by 
those who read it to see the next on heredity, with the in- 
creasing conviction of its need all over our country, have 
urged its speedy completion. 

But the work of the Society which the author has the 
honor of representing has almost doubled during the past 
two years with no increase of helpers, hence it has been 
simply impossible to carry out the original programme. He 
has done the very best he could under the circumstances. 

There is, however, another side which the readers of thi& 
monogram, we hope, will appreciate. The subject of "here- 
dity" as it lay in the thought of the author has been growing: 
immensely during the past two years, so that the work in 
its present shape covers a much larger field and a more com- 
plete discussion than would have been possible had the 
original plan and promise been carried out. There has- 
been, therefore, some compensation for delay. 

The author's acknowledgments are due to Rev. Geo. K* 
Hoover, D.D., of Chicago, Supt. of the "Home Finding- 
Association," for the loan of the beautiful and suggestive 
Frontispiece — "On Life's Sea"— and also for valuable 
material found at the close of Chapter I. 

Also to the Rev. W. TV. Knox, D.D., of New Brunswick, 
N. J.; the Rev. A. TV. TVishart of Trenton, N. J.; to Rev. W. 
Henry Thompson of Pittsburg, Pa.; Major Burnett of Des 
Moines, Iowa, for kindly criticisms and valuable sugges- 



4 PREFACE. 

tions. And to these last twp gentlemen, together with Rev. 
Jarvis Maybee of Syracuse, N. Y.; Dr. Amos Barlow of St. 
Joseph, Mich.; Rev. J. P. Dysart of Milwaukee, Wis.; Rev. 
E. P. Savage of St. Paul, Minn., and Rev. W. B. Sherrard 
of Sioux Falls, S. Dakota, for the loan of a portion of the 
beautiful pictures of children with which this work is embel- 
lished and so clearly illustrated. 

Also to the Rev. Dr. Twining of the "New York Inde- 
pendent," for hunting up and furnishing the back number 
of the "Independent" containing the valuable "symposium" 
that forms so interesting a portion of Chapter II. 

And last of all and most of all— to a brief essay upon the 
subject of "heredity" which accidentally fell into our hands 
for only an hour, but was hurriedly copied in shorthand and 
really formed the basis of the present work. A goodly num- 
ber of the facts and statements found in the first and second 
■chapters of this work were taken from this short essay and 
without other acknowledgment than this— since both the 
shorthand copy and even the name of the essayist has been 
lost. We take this method, therefore, of confessing the 
apparent plagiarism, and of acknowledging our indebtedness 
to the unknown author for an important contribution to the 
iirst two chapters of this work. 

We shall undoubtedly be criticised, perhaps sharply, by 
•conservative readers for discussing so bluntly and freely 
such delicate matters as prenatal influence, and the separate 
^and individual contribution of father and mother in the here- 
dities of the coming child; but how else can the truth be 
-discovered? These vastly important matters lie at the very 
foundation of child-saving work, and we would be utterly 
false to our mission should we hesitate to speak clearly and 
without reserve. 

Such as it is, therefore, with many imperfections and a 
most unpleasant consciousness of failure in reaching our 
own ideals of what such a discussion ought to be; and with 
many an earnest prayer that the Divine Spirit may be 
pleased to use it in the rescue and final salvation of some 
iiomeless waif— we cast this second booklet upon the waters. 



HEREDITY. 



CHAPTER I. 

IN the first Booklet, "The Value of a Child," 
the idea was presented and enforced, 
that while God loves all children with an 
intense love, He seems to manifest a peculiar 
interest in the most needy ones, the outcast 
and abandoned, those whose antecedents are 
most unfortunate. It seems to be just like 
JHim to love most those who most need His 
love. He calls himself the "Father of the 
fatherless/' and this, too, w T hether the earthly 
parent had been good or bad, whether he 
had died or had abandoned his child. He goes 
so far as to inspire the Psalmist to say, "When 
my father and my mother forsake me, 
then the Lord will take me up." If father and 
mother are both living, but have become so de- 
praved as to have abandoned their offspring, 
even in such an extreme case, the Lord sees in 
that child a fit object of His tenderest love, and 
stoops to "take him up." 

It was also shown that the reason for 
such tender interest in these unfortunate ones 
is because God looks into the future and can 
see a most wonderful outcome from such lowly 
and depraved beginnings. A skilled artist 
will select a rough block of marble, perhaps 



6 HEREDITY. 

very rough, to the ordinary eye, even ugly in 
appearance, but not so to this artist, for he 
detects an angel in that uncouth block, and 
proceeds to expend upon it an immense amount 
of labor and patience and skill. For days and 
weeks and months and even years — if he be 
working for immortality — he chisels and mea- 
sures and scrapes and rubs and polishes until 
he has brought the angel out. Nothing could 
have induced him to bestow so much time and 
thought and care but the discovery of the an- 
gel at the beginning of his work. 

And so God can see in the most unfortunate 
waif an angel, and more than an angel, a king 
and a priest unto God, one whose face will 
shine as the sun in His eternal kingdom — if 
only such child can be placed in proper envi- 
ronments, be surrounded by the right kind of 
Christian atmosphere — that is, if He can in- 
duce His people, with His help, to do the chis- 
eling and the scrubbing and the polishing. 

"In other words, the Lord considers the future of the child 
rather than its past; what it is and may become, if wisely 
trained, rather than the accidents of its birth, or its unfortu- 
nate antecedents. We are prone to look backward — be influ- 
enced by the character of the fire from which this 'brand has- 
been plucked/ or of the 'pit from which it has been digged.* 

"Is it not, then, our wisdom to face about and place our- 
selves in a position where we can view matters from the 
standpoint of our Lord, and thus be permitted to feel the in- 
spiration of his motives? so that whenever we see a needy 
child, a homeless waif, we can think of him, not as to his 
i>ast, but as to his future; not as the degraded progeny of 
debauchery and crime perhaps, but as one who, by earnest 
effort and sacrifice on our part, may become a king and ai 



HEREDITY. 7 

priest unto God and shine as the sun in the kingdom of his 
Father. And then decide whether we are willing to pay the 
price required to fit that soul for such a position in the com- 
ing kingdom." From "The Value of a Child," pp. 44, 45. 

Against all these exalted views as to the 
future of a child with unfortunate antecedents 
we are met at the very threshold with the cry, 
"Heredity." This child will be a "chip from 
the old block." "What you have been saying 
sounds nicely, but as a matter of fact, 'like be- 
gets like;' we don't expect to 'gather grapes- 
from thorns, or figs from thistles.' It is very 
easy to blind our eyes when we look back- 
ward and attempt to take God's view of the 
future; but when past experience proves that 
the character of the 'fire from which this brand 
has been plucked' and the impurity of the 'pit 
from which it has been digged' is likely to cling 
to that young soul all through its life here — 
then it is asking a great deal for a family of cul- 
ture and refinement to receive such a child into 
the sacred portals of the family life, lift it up to 
a social equality with themselves, and give it 
the love, sympathy and tender interest that 
would be the birth-right of their own child." 

The Society with which the writer is con- 
nected, in common with all similar child-saving 
agencies, finds this the one great, insuperable 
obstacle to its work in the minds of many 
of the best families of the country. As 
a matter of fact, the objection grows stronger 
as vou ascend the social scale. The more 



S HEREDITY. 

refined and educated the family, the higher 
their position in the social circle — the more 
intense and assertive is this prejudice against 
the child's heredity, and the less willing 
to receive it into the home as one of the 
family. It can be received as a servant, a 
menial, without a question as to its antece- 
dents; but "it is quite another thing to receive 
a child to your bosom as your very own, make 
it your confident and attempt to love it as your 
own flesh and blood." 

Probably more than one-half of all the appli- 
cations we receive for children have some 
such condition as the following: "But it must 
be of good, respectable parentage, as I do not 
^are to take a child that would disgrace our 
home as she grows up." Now, while the ma- 
jority of the children that require our care 
would by many be regarded as undesirable in 
their antecedents, the real truth is, as we shall 
see, our children will measure well up to the 
average in this direction. To illustrate: A 
father belonging to one of the oldest and most 
reputable Christian families in this State be- 
came a helpless cripple through rheumatism 
after eight little children had come into his 
home. The mother, an equally reputable and 
earnest Christian, after a heroic struggle to 
keep the wolf from the door by carrying on her 
husband's little truck farm, suddenly died, as 
the result of an accident. Thus eight helpless 
children are thrown upon the charities of the 



HEREDITY. 



9 



public, some of whom our Society are asked to 
care for. 




Twins. 

These beautiful twins were found in an alms- 
house, and yet both father and mother were 
members of a Christian church and very repu- 
table people. The father, after various finan- 
cial reverses and accumulated bodily ailments, 
dies, leaving wife and one child without a 
penny. Shortly after his death, the mother 
gave birth to these twins. Having no rela- 
tives able to care for her, and finding no family 



10 



HEREDITY. 



willing to take her in with two babies, she is 
obliged to accept the aid of the county, and be- 
comes an inmate of the almshouse. Her whole 
nature, however, shrank from such a life, 
and especially at the revolting thought of hav- 
ing her beautiful babes ruined by an alms- 
house training, so, though heart-broken, she 
asked our Society to find a home for them. 

A Christian mother dies, leaving four bright 
little boys in the care of the father, who does 
his very best to keep his family together. But 
obliged to be absent all day at his work, the 
boys, without a mother's constant care, easily 
drift into the street; and after a year's experi- 
ence the father decides that the best thing for 
his boys is to place them in Christian families* 
through our agency. 




The Youngest of the Four Brothers. 



HEREDITY. 11 

Here is another equally suggestive case. 




The father of these four beautiful children 
dies, and the mother attempts to care for them, 
but after an heroic struggle of three years, 
finally breaks down in health and is obliged to 
appeal to the Children's Home Society in the 
State of New York to secure homes for these 
•clear ones. 

Such cases as these are not exceptional. 



12 HEREDITY. 

They are constantly occurring with endless 
variations.* 

And then, as we shall see later, very many 
children whose antecedents are accounted un- 
fortunate have really some of the best blood of 
the country in their veins. 

But, on the other hand, we do have to provide 
for a multitude of children who would properly 
be classified as unfortunate in their antece- 
dents. They are the children of improvident, 
worthless parents — parents who have thrown 
themselves away by indulgence in drink, shift- 
less parents who have drifted into the slums or 
into the poor-house, criminal parents who have 
become so degraded as to have lost the parental 
instinct and have abandoned their child, or it 
is the large army of unfortunate maidens who, 
by various subterfuges, have been betrayed by 
designing men. These are the classes who fur- 
nish possibly a majority of the homeless chil- 

*Such cases as these are not a contradiction of the Psalmist's 
statement, "I have been young and now am old, yet have I 
never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread." 
This evidently does not mean that the "seed of the righteous" 
may not sometimes be brought into straits, be obliged to- shift 
for himself, may be turned over to some home-finding agency and 
through it placed among strangers in a new home. For this may 
be God's way of blessing those children; securing for them envi- 
ronments far more desirable than their own parents coul£ ever 
have provided for them. So that what seemed an overwhelming 
misfortune may prove in the end the richest of blessings. "Be- 
hind the frowning providence" God "hides a smiling face." As 
an illustration of this note the provision made for the four chil- 
dren shown in the last of the above pictures. 

The oldest girl is now the only child in a Methodist minister's 
home. 

The next is the only daughter of an ex-County Judge (a Chris- 
tian home.) 

The oldest boy has been adopted, and is the only child in the 
home of a County Superintendent of the Pcor — a wealthy home. 
The youngest boy is the only son in a banker's family. Both 
boys live in the same town and attend tfce same church (Pres- 
byterian church.) 



HEKEDITY. 13 

dren that appeal to the various rescue agencies 
for aid and succor, and for whom we make our 
appeal, and have undertaken this series of 
"booklets." And we think we understand 
somewhat the magnitude of the task we have 
placed before us, the immense prejudices to be 
met and overcome before many of these good, 
Christian families will open their homes and 
their hearts to these innocent but helpless little 
ones. 

The Proposition Plainly Stated. 

And first of all, it may be well to state 
plainly what is to be attempted in this mono- 
graph. 

It is not our purpose to show^ that there is lit- 
tle or nothing in the subject of heredity, that 
the prevailing prejudices against a child with 
undesirable antecedents are unfounded, that a 
child, for instance, of drunken parentage, or 
born in the slums, or of shiftless paupers, or 
from the criminal classes, is just as desirable 
a child, all things considered, as a child of bet- 
ter antecedents. No such preposterous posi- 
tions are to be taken. The simple purpose will 
be to point out, so far as we may be able, the 
exact facts, so that the real situation may be 
apprehended, and in doing this we think it will 
be made to appear that much misapprehension 
and unfounded prejudice exists in the public 
mind upon this subject of "heredity," and that 
many of the objections urged against the chil- 



14 



HEREDITY. 



dren of such parentage are imaginary, not 
real; and that the real objections can be met 
and overcome by the judicious parent who un- 
dertakes his task in the fear of God and with 
wise reference to the future of the child. 

In other words, the purpose will be, so far as 




we can, to clear the sky of mists and fog, and so 
point out the situation that those who receive 



HEREDITY. 15 

these little unfortunate ones in the name of 
Christ shall have clear conceptions of what 
they are undertaking, and thus be the better 
prepared to meet the crises as they appear. 
Or, stated in another form, it will be our pur- 
pose to show that God's special interest in 
these homeless children with unsavory antece- 
dents is, after all, well founded; and that He 
can see a magnificent future before such chil- 
dren, if He can get His people to do for them what 
He icant s done. 

The Meaning of "Heredity." 

The "Encyclopaedic Dictionary" thus de- 
tines the word "heredity:" 

"The tendency which there is in each animal or plant, in all 
essential characters, to resemble its parent, so as .to be of the 
same species." 

There are two conceptions in the mind when 
the word is used: 

a. A general conception that "like begets 
like;" that every individual species will pro- 
duce its own kind. Oats have always descended 
from cats, and dogs from dogs; apple trees 
never bear pears or peaches, and wheat never 
produces oats or corn. Everything "after its 
kind." Adam "begat a son in his own like- 
ness," and so all the present generation of men 
and women came from the past generation of 
men and women. We may be still more ex- 
plicit. All that belongs to the genus "man" 



16 HEREDITY. 

with a body, a soul and a spirit, comes to him 
through his parent, is inherited. Every por- 
tion of the body, its bones and sinews and mus- 
cles, its arteries and veins, its heart and lungs, 
its eyes and ears and mouth, its arms and 
hands and limbs — every faculty of mind or 
soul, every passion whether animal or mental 
or spiritual, everything that belongs to us in 
our triune nature comes to us through our 
parents. 

6. But this word is used in a more restricted 
and specific sense. The human family is some- 
times divided into five general races: Indian, 
African, Malaysian, Mongolian and Cauca- 
sian; and these race characteristics are in- 
herited. Negroes never produce Indians, nor 
Chinamen Caucasians. And these general 
divisions are subdivided into a large variety of 
tribes and families, each of which preserve in 
a wonderful way, generation after generation, 
their own peculiar traits or characteristics 
that distinguish them from all other families 
or tribes. The Jews, for instance, differ from 
all other people upon earth in certain direc- 
tions, and have retained these family peculiar- 
ities for thousands of years. From a crowd of 
men on our street to-day one can pick out a Ger- 
man, or Italian, or Frenchman, or Scandina- 
vian, or Scotchman, or Englishman, or Irish- 
man. Each one of these men possesses* pre- 
cisely similar members of the body, and facul- 
ties and passions of the soul. But in the devel- 
opment of all these there are such differences 



HEREDITY. IT 

as to readily distinguish them the one from the 
other; and these differences descend from 
father to son so strangely and uniformly that 
a pure German can as readily be distinguished 
from a Frenchman or Italian or Irishman to- 
day as three centuries ago. 

But even this does not exhaust the popular 
conception of the meaning of "heredity." We 
must pass from the tribe and the race pecu- 
liarities to the individual. Each person pos- 
sesses some peculiarity of form or color or fea- 
ture or character that makes him unlike every 
other person, so unlike that you readily distin- 
guish him from all others, so soon as you know 
him you can pick him out from among a great 
crowd of people without difficulty. It may be 
difficult to define just what that peculiarity is. 
It may be the color of the eyes or hair, the 
shape of the nose, or mouth, or chin; it may be 
in his height of stature, or in his breadth of 
chest; it may be in his peculiar walk, the poise 
of his head, his erect or stooping posture; it 
may be in the voice, its peculiar modulations, 
its shrillness or sweetness or harshness; it 
may be in the eyes, their brightness or dullness, 
their love or their hate; it may be a frank, open 
face that immediately reveals the character 
behind it, or it may be a face that puzzles and 
perplexes you. Now we mean by heredity spe- 
cifically, that this person will probably beget 
a child in his own image, and this image will 
embody and disclose precisely these pecu- 
liar characteristics that make the parent ta 



18 HEREDITY. 

differ from all other persons, so that the on- 
looker will readily say, "A chip of the old 
Mock." 

The personal resemblance of the child is not 
only oftentimes exceedingly remarkable in 
the general structure of the body, in the 
height, size, tendency to obesity or leanness, in 
the color of the hair and eyes, in the gait, pecu- 
liar movements of the body, expression of the 
face, tone of voice, etc., etc., but is exhibited in 
multiform ways. 

Certain diseases, like scrofula or consump- 
tion, are known to run in families for genera- 
tions, scarcely a member in many cases escap- 
ing. So are blindness and deafness. Ribot 
relates, "In one family blindness was heredi- 
tary* for three generations, and 37 children 
and grandchildren became blind between their 
seventeenth and eighteenth year." 

"Take, for example, the eloquent and tragic story of Chil- 
marth, on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Here, among the 
first settlers who came, now twelve generations ago, were two 
deaf persons. To-day, one in every 25 persons in that sec- 
tion is deaf, while a large number of the inhabitants are 
TDlind, and several are idiots. A scholarly physician, in a re- 
cent essay, referring to this region, observes: 

" 'This community, isolated from the outer world, has not 
only retained its primitive customs and manners, but the 
physical taint in the original stock has also produced a plente- 
ous harvest of affliction. In one collateral branch deafness 
has occurred and disappeared and recurred with curious 



*We shall see in Chapter 4 that this expression "blindness was 
hereditary" is not strictly true; had the blindness been inherited, 
the children would have been born blind, which was not the 
•ease in a single instance. 



HEREDITY. 19* 

atavistic perseverance. In another collateral branch blindness 
has pursued the same wayward but persistent course. Blind- 
ness and deafness are, therefore, not the offspring of idiocy,, 
but each defect has grown more and more intense in its par- 
ticular line of descent, until what was at first only a defective- 
sense becomes a deterioration of the entire central shrine of 
the mind, and an idiot is born. At Chilmarth, the mental and 
physical progress is downwards.' " "Arena," July, ? 95. 

The same is true of malformation. 

"A prominent citizen in this State has malformed feet and: 
hands; several of his children have inherited the malforma- 
tion; and cases of sexdigitation are on record which were- 
transmitted from four generations." 

A most remarkable illustration of this is the 
"claw-fingered colony" liying in the yalley of 




the Cattaraugus, about thirty-five miles from 
Buffalo, New York. I am indebted to the New 



20 HEUEDITY. 

York "World" of August 23d, 1896, for the ac- 
■companying cut and for an intensely interest- 
ing account of these queer people. On ac- 
count of their clannish spirit and social isola- 
tion there has been much intermarrying 
among them; and this undoubtedly has had 
much to do with the perpetuation of their 
strange deformity. 

"New York's Claw-Fingered People. 
"(Sketched from Life by a 'Sunday World' Artist.) 

"All the claw-fingered and claw-toed people of Zoar trace 
-their descent from a man named Robbins, who settled there 
in the early part of the century. His neighbors noticed that 
his hands and feet were remarkably deformed, being so bent 
and twisted that they resembled claws more than human 
hands and feet. 

"He was not inclined to talk about the deformity, and it 
does not appear that he ever explained how he came by it or 
where he had lived before coming to Zoar. After his deform- 
ity reappeared in his descendants, it became the general opin- 
ion that he himself inherited it. But others believed what has 
now become a tradition in the valley, that Robbins belonged 
i;o a well-to-do Eastern family, and that he settled in this 
almost inaccessible spot because of his deformity. 

"Robbins had several children in whom the claw digits ap- 
peared, but in a very much modified form. In the third gen- 
eration, however, the deformity often reappeared in as 
marked a degree as it had existed in the original Robbins. 

"A peculiar thing about this strange heritage is that it is 
impossible to tell where or in what form it will appear. Some- 
times it is inherited from the father, sometimes from the 
mother; sometimes it appears in all the children of a family, 
-at others in only one or two in a large number. 

"Sometimes a father and mother who have well-formed 
hands and feet will bring up a large family of children, all of 
them badly and, perhaps, variously deformed, and again par- 



HEKEDITY. 21 

ents with unsightly digits will have children in whom no de- 
formity appears. 

"Sometimes the disfigurement appears only in a person's 
nands, but not in his feet, or vice versa; sometimes it appears 
in one hand or foot only, and not in the other, and so on, until 
apparently all the possible combinations are exhausted. 

"The term claw-fingered would not apply to more than half 
of those with deformed extremities, and, of course, none of 
them has what could scientifically be termed claws. 

"But while the mark which has set these people of Zoar 
apart from their fellow-men varies in separate cases, its gen- 
oral appearance is always much the same. The hands are 
usually broad and short in the palm, with stumpy fingers. 

"The fingers usually curve in, and the joints in most of 
them are either greatly out of place or entirely lacking. That 
is, the finger may have no joints at all or only one instead of 
the usual two. Where there are two joints they are fre- 
quently greatly out of place, being either close together or 
olse set at the ends of the fingers. 

"Sometimes a hand is seen in Zoar in which all the fingers 
have grown together into one broad stump, and occasionally 
a child is born with a sixth finger or toe. 

"The claw-fingered folk of Zoar are looked upon by their 
neighbors as being 'queer,' but this is not remarkable, con- 
sidering that their peculiar heritage has for a long time led 
them to isolate themselves. They are industrious and honest, 
and there are few hands among them too much deformed to 
wield an axe or a hoe or a plough, for the claw-fingers are all 
farmers and woodsmen. They are seldom seen outside the 
valley, but live their own lives apart from others. 

"How long this strange perversity of nature will continue is 
an interesting question. If the claw-fingers of Zoar are phy- 
sical degenerates, they may be expected to die out after a 
time, but at present they seem to be healthy and vigorous 
enough." 

In the "Arena" for July, 1895, pp. 246-8, the 
editor, Mr. B. O. Flower, quotes from Dr. Geo. 
W. Pope, of Washington, D. C, some very 



22 HEREDITY. 

striking examples of what would seem to be 
inherited passion for strong drink: 

"A. was a steady drinker from youth, as had been his father 
and grandfather before liim, drinking several times daily and. 
frequently indulging in heavy drinking bouts. He was of a 
highly aristocratic, talented and wealthy family of Southern: 
planters; very hospitable, kept open house, liquors always on 
the sideboard; and prided himself on his blue blood and 
lineage. He married a talented and accomplished young lady 
of noble character and aristocratic family of temperate- 
habits, never indulging in drink. The fruit of that union was- 
three children, two sons who resembled the father in physical, 
appearance and character traits, and a daughter who resem- 
bled her mother. The latter married happily and became the 
mother of healthy and good children, a credit to the family. 
The two sons of A. manifested a taste for drink in early 
youth, and the eldest, with the habit confirmed, married a 
young woman of temperate habits and ancestry. He died of 
mania a potu, leaving his widow with two children, now about 
20 and 25 years old. In spite of the efforts of their mother 
and friends, these boys had inherited their father's appetite, 
and early took to drink; they are now confirmed hard drinkers,, 
having at intervals periodical sprees, which often end in de- 
lirium tremens. A.'s other son is living, a confirmed inebri- 
ate, perfectly worthless, and supported by his friends. 

"B., C. and D. were three sons of a well-to-do farmer, a 
steady drinker, as also were his father and grandfather. B. 
and C. resembled their father in physical appearance and char- 
acter traits; became early addicted to drink, never married, 
and died drunkards. D. resembled his mother, who never- 
drank, and came of temperate ancestry. With the sad fate 
of his father and two brothers before his eyes, D. never 
touched liquor and became a well-to-do banker, and accumu- 
lated wealth. Unfortunately, he married a young woman 
whose father and grandfather were drunkards, and she re- 
sembled them in personal appearance aid character traits, but 
never used liquor in any form. Four sons and two daughters 
were the result of that union. The sons resembled the pater- 
nal grandfather, and early manifested an appetite for and. 



HEREDITY. 23 

took to drink. When their father died, the property was 
equally divided, and they immediately plunged into the wild- 
est excesses, squandered their property, and became con- 
firmed inebriates. They never married. One died of delirium 
tremens, one was killed in a drunken brawl, and one cut his 
throat in a drunken frenzy. The last is still living, a half- 
demented drunkard. Of the two girls who resembled the 
maternal grandfather, one became a confirmed inebriate after 
an unhappy marriage; the other is insane from having in- 
dulged in whiskey, opium and chloral. In this case the drink- 
propensity has passed through one generation in a quiescent, 
non-developed state, and has developed in full activity in the 
second generation, to the destruction of both branches of the 
family." 

A third equally remarkable case this writer 
traces through five generations, showing that 
the same dreadful inheritance of appetite for 
drink descended from parent to child — 
in several instances passing one generation of 
innocent and noble mothers in a "quiescent or 
germ state/' as the writer puts it — only to be 
evolved in full flower in the boys who resem^ 
bled their mothers in personal appearance and 
traits. 

Dr. T. D. Crothers, of Hartford, in a paper oil 
"Inebriety and Heredity/' (1886)says: 

"Alcoholic heredity, or the transmission of a special ten- 
dency to use spirits or any narcotic to excess, is much more 
common than is supposed. * * In the line of direct here- 
dity, or those inebriates whose parents or grandparents used 
spirits to excess, we find that about one in every three cases 
can be traced to inebriate ancestors. Quite a large propor- 
tion of these parents are moderate or only occasional excessive 
users of spirits. If the father is a moderate drinker, and the 
mother a nervous, consumptive woman, or one with a weak,, 
nervous organization, inebriety very often follows in the chil- 



24 HEREDITY. 

clren. If both parents use wine or beer on the table continu- 
ously, temperate, sober children will be the exception. If the 
mother uses various forms of alcoholic drinks as medicines, 
or narcotic drugs for real or imaginary purposes, the inebriety 
of the children is very common. Many cases have been noted 
of mothers using wine, beer or some form of alcoholic drinks 
for lung trouble, or other affections, and the children born dur- 
ing this period have been inebriates, while others born before 
and after this drinking period have been temperate. 

"The hereditary nature of the criminal propensity is un- 
questionable. By this is not meant simply that criminals are 
children of criminals, but also that they inherit such traits of 
physical and p^sychical constitution as naturally lead to crime. 
Ribot says: 'The heredity* of the tendency to thieving is so 
.generally admitted that it would be superfluous to bring 
together here facts which abound in every record of judicial 
proceedings.' He cites as an illustration the genealogy of the 
'Chretien Family,' from Dr. Despine's 'Psycholegie Naturelle.' 
" 'The father had three sons: Pierre, Thomas and Jean- 
Baptiste. 1. Pierre had a son, Jean Francois, who was con- 
demned for life to hard labor for robbery and murder. 2. 
Thomas had two sons: (1) Francois, condemned to hard labor 
for murder, and (2) Martin, condemned to death for murder. 
Martin's son died in Cayenne, whither he had been trans- 
ported for robbery. 3. Jean-Baptiste had a son, Jean- 
w Francois, whose wife was Marie Taure (belonging to a family 
of incendiaries). This Jean-Francois had seven children: (1) 
Jean-Francois, found guilty of several robberies, died in 
prison; (2) Benoist, fell off a roof which he had scaled, and 
was killed; (3) X , nicknamed Claim found guilty of sev- 
eral robberies, died at the age of 25; (4) Marie-Reine died in 
prison, whither she had been sent for theft; (5) Marie-Rose, 
same fate,, same deeds; (6) Victor, now in jail for theft; (7) 
Victorine married one Lemair, whose son was condemned to 
death for murder and robbery.' " 



*We insist again that the word "heredity" is not properly or 
scientifically used in this quotation. At least we refer the reader 
*o the discussion in Chapters 3 and 4 for a rational explanation of 
these various instances of supposed heredity. 



HEKEDITY. 25 

But if bad appetites and passions seem to be 
Inherited, so are the good ones, as for instance, 
the talent and the passion for music. 

It is quite doubtful whether there is a musi- 
cian of any note now living, one or both of 
whose parents did not possess some musical 
ability. Mozart, Kosini, Bellini, Bethoven 
and Bach are noted examples of this. I know 
of a family consisting of six sons and three 
daughters all of whom had fine musical talent. 
The father and mother of this family were ex- 
cellent singers, the father having had for many 
years a local reputation as a successful teacher 
of vocal music. This gift is still perpetuated 
in all branches of the family down to the 
fourth generation, which has numbered nearly 
100 singers. 

The family of Scipio Africanus Major was 
distinguished in Boman history through 12 
generations, covering a period of more than 
300 years, having produced many great gen- 
erals and statesmen. The family of the late 
James G. Blaine has displayed unusual ability 
for four generations. Dr. Lyman Beecher was 
the leading orator of his day. Six sons and 
daughters have a National reputation as 
preachers or writers. 

Mr. Galton, in "Hereditary Genius," appears 
to make it very plain that "genius" or exalted 
ability in any direction is hereditary. He 
points out, for instance, that of thirty Lord 
Chancellors of England during a period of 200 
years, eighty per cent, of them had eminent 



26 HEREDITY. 

relatives, fathers or sons. Of over 200 of the 
highest judges in the kingdom, he uses this lan- 
guage: 

"It appears that the parentage of the judges in the last six 
reigns, viz., since the accession of George I., is as follows, 
reckoning in percentages: Noble, honorable or baronet (but 
not judges), 9; landed gentlemen, 35; judge, barrister or attor- 
ney, 15; bishop or clergymen, 8; medical, 7; merchants and 
various, unclassed, 10; tradesmen, 7; unknown, 9." 

That is to say, 67 per cent, of these eminent 
jurists were from families classed in England 
as above the common lot. 

Mr. Galton has with great painstaking 
prepared a list of the most eminent men in 
England, covering a period of 200 or more 
years, and embracing eight different classes — 
judges, statesmen, commanders, literary men, 
scientists, poets, artists and divines. This list 
numbers 977 men, the most eminent and suc- 
cessful in English history for 200 years past. 
He finds that 31 per cent, of them had eminent 
fathers; 41 per cent, had eminent brothers, and 
48 per cent, had eminent sons. 

The bearing of this statement upon the sub- 
ject of hereditary genius will be better under- 
stood when it is remembered that there were 
a great many millions of families in England 
during those 200 years; and that all these 
many millions of people were able to produce 
only 69 very eminent men, while 100 eminent 
men were producing 31 very eminent men. In 
other words, less than 250 eminent fathers 



HEREDITY. 27 

could furnish England with as many very emi- 
nent men as all the other families in the 
United Kingdom combined could furnish, and 
that 100 very eminent men could produce 48 
eminent sons while the entire kingdom beside 
could produce 52! 

Moral qualities seem also to be transmitted 
by heredity. The two illustrations given at 
the close of the first Booklet, "The Value of a 
Child/' are remarkable illustrations. On the 
one hand six generations of criminals and 
paupers and profligates of the lowest and vil- 
est sort ; and on the other hand, six generations 
of upright, pure-minded Christian people, em- 
bracing a goodly number of ministers of the 
gospel, a still larger number of deacons and 
Sunday-school superintendents, with Sunday- 
school teachers and other devout workers by 
the hundreds. 

In the older portions of our country, the ex- 
amples are abundant where vagabondism, 
pauperism and crime have run in certain fam- 
ilies for generations. In how many of our 
almshouses, for instance, may be found pauper 
families of three generations, grandparents, 
parents and children. 

"Go back to the time when this almshouse was built, and 
what has become of the children that were there with their 
parents? Their families are in the almshouse to-day, grand- 
parents and grandchildren. They are turned out at 19 and 
come back again with a family of children, and they grow up 
and go out only to come back again." From an annual re- 
port of the Directors of the Poor in Pennsylvania. 



28 HEREDITY. 

The Scriptures teach that the sins of the fa- 
thers are visited upon the children unto the 
third and fourth generation. But thank God 
there is no fatalism in the sacred Word, for it 
is added — "unto the third and fourth genera- 
tion of them that hate Me" The children are not 
punished for the sins of the parent except they 
follow their parent's example — "hate Me" 
Through the mouth of the prophet Ezekiel God 
most emphatically protests against the fatal- 
istic proverb — "The fathers have eaten sour 
grapes and the children's teeth are set on 
edge." — 

"As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion 
any more to use this proverb in Israel." 

And then proceeds in a most energetic way to 
assert that if a man who has reached the very 
lowest depths of depravity and crime — has be- 
come a robber, a murderer, an idolater, a 
usurer, &c, if such a man — 

***** beget a son that seeth all his father's sins which: 
he' hath done, and considereth and doeth not such like; 
* * * but hath executed my judgments and walked in my 
statutes; he shall not die for the iniquity of his father; he 
shall surely live." 

"Yet ye say, Why? Doth not the son bear the iniquity of 
the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful 
and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them,, 
he shall surely live. 

"The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear 
the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the 
iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall. 
be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon, 
him." Ez. 18:3, 19, 20. 



HEREDITY. 29 s 

In the following pages we think w T e shall 
discover a most effectual cure, God's own cure, 
for all the bondage, the handicapping that 
conies to a child from its unfortunate here- 
dities, the Almshouse heredity mentioned 
above as well as all other inherited evil ten- 
dencies. And as a foretaste of this discussion, 
and a fitting conclusion to this chapter, I am 
constrained to insert a statement just received 
from one of the most successful workers in this 
country in the department of child-saving — 
Rev. Geo. K. Hoover, D.D., for years past a 
recognized leader in the "Children's Home So- 
ciety," and now General Superintendent of the 
"Home Finding Association," a new organiza- 
tion that undertakes to find homes not only 
for homeless children, but for mothers with 
their babes, for released prisoners, &c. 

In a personal letter, dated Chicago, June 14 r 
1898, he says: 

"Dear Brother Lamb: — It is now ten years since I left the 
regular pastorate and engaged in the rescue and care of de- 
pendent children. Each successive year has emphasized my 
belief in the superiority of environment and training as com- 
pared with the power of hereditary tendencies. 

"About eight years since, I received five children who were 
of the third generation of paupers, and the history of the fami- 
lies had been very unfortunate. In another instance I 
received two children who were said to have been the fifth 
generation of paupers. I placed all of these children into care- 
fully selected, well-approved family homes, with the result 
that the children have developed into as desirable and prom- 
ising young men and women as are the average whose here- 
ditary descent was unobjectionable. I could give many such 
instances did time permit. 



30 



HEREDITY. 



"I am convinced that the public at large has very greatly 
over estimated the power of heredity, and not only greatly, 
but greviously, underestimated the almost miraculous power 
of environment and training." 





CHAPTER II- 

JN the previous chapter we have presented 
a large number of illustrations show- 
ing the wonderful scope of heredity, its 
strange power to reproduce its kind physically, 
mentally and morally, even to the copying of de- 
formities and weaknesses and diseases of body 
and mind and soul. I have purposely multi- 
plied illustrations strong, clear and appar- 
ently convincing, so that the warmest advo- 
cates of the certainties and the almost omnipo- 
tent power of hereditary laws cannot accuse 
me of unfairness or of understating their 
position; and so as to cover the entire field 
of objection on the part of honest and con- 
scientious Christian people who hesitate to re- 
ceive into their home and heart the child of 
unfortunate antecedents, lest after all their 
pains, education and training the hereditary 
taints will by and by assert themselves to their 
shame and humiliation. 

But there is another side to this question — 
it might be more exactly true to say there are 
several sides — and it is not wise to hasten to a 
conclusion until the question has been viewed 
from all sides. 

While a vast array of facts may be presented 
to prove that as a general thing the qualities 
of the parents are transmitted to their off- 
spring, it is also true that the law of heredity 
3 



32 HEREDITY. 

is by no means uniform in its operation. The 
apparent exceptions are very numerous, so 
numerous as to lead many to doubt whether 
there is any such law. 

There are cases on record where not 
the least mental or moral resemblance be- 
tween the offspring and the ancestors, 
whether near or remote, can be traced. 
Great men often suddenly spring from 
the most obscure families — men who seem 
to have been raised up for a special need r 
like Moses, the great law-giver, David, Mo- 
hammed, Lincoln and Grant. Often parents 
of very limited intellectual faculties have chil- 
dren possessing remarkable gifts. Socrates, 
esteemed by the Oracle of Apollo, the wisest 
of all men, was the son of a low woman. The 
mother of Euripides, the tragic poet, was a 
market woman, and Demosthenes, the prince 
of orators, was the son of a poor tradesman in 
knives. Livingston, Kitto, Hans Christian 
Andersen, Randolf Rogers, Hugh Miller, Addi- 
son, Stanley and multitudes of other distin- 
guished men were the children of poor, obscure 
parents. 

Let me give my readers an incident that I 
have personally verified. 

From the "New York Recorder" of February 
4th, 1895, I have clipped the following, under 
the title : "Romance of Two Brothers :" 

"Port Jervis, Feb. 3.— The wedding of the Rev. George 
Washington Scarlet, pastor of the Reformed Church in New 
Hurley, and Miss Laura Tuice, on) Wednesday, adds another 



HEREDITY. 33 

link to the chain of romance with which that dominie is con- 
nected. His life has been a continued romance from the time 
he and his brother, John Adams Scarlet, were found parentless- 
at a tender age and taken to an orphan home in Newark, >L 
J. Their antecedents seemed to be shrouded in mystery, and 
( they were too young to tell their own story or give their names. 
Because of the red kilts which they wore, they were called 
'Scarlet,' and the name George Washington was given to the 
elder, while John Adams was the honored name applied to the 
younger. These namesakes of the first two Presidents of the 
United States continued to enjoy the hospitality, care and 
training of the home, and grew to be obedient, kind-hearted 
and intelligent boys. 

"A Hunterdon County farmer visited the place with a view 
to taking a lad home with him. George Washington was- 
recommended by the authorities. His bright eyes and genial 
look gave him a decidedly prepossessing appearance, and he 
became a member of this man's household. It happened that 
a year later another farmer from that county in need of a boy- 
applied to that institution, and John Adams was fortunate- 
enough to secure a private home for himself 

"For two years the boys were unconsciously within a few 
miles of each other. They enjoyed the influence of Christian 
homes and the educational privileges of the district school" 
and m due time were sent to Rutgers College. There thr 
made good records for themselves, and were encouraged to 
study for the ministry. Their professional stud es ended 
££ ZeTea^ "* "^ *»» ^ — «« 

*„ J*? ?? Wif ? 0f the Rev - G - W - Scarlet hav- 
ing died from injuries sustained in a fall, the 

wedding announced above is the second ser- 
ttc life that haS C ° me int ° tMs roman - 

Rev W. e. Davis, D.D., pastor of the Re- 
formed Church in Lebanon, N. J., was the cler- 
gyman selected to tie that first double knot 



34 HEREDITY. 

which united the two young preachers and the 
two sisters. He fully confirms the above in- 
teresting romance, which the brothers related 
to him when they came to be married. To con- 
form to the letter of the law, he asked them 
•certain questions: 

"What was the name of your father ?" An- 
swer. "We do not know." 

"What was the name of your mother?" An- 
swer. "We do not know." 

And then they had to explain to him the 
mystery of their antecedents and how they 
came by the name of George Washington and 
John Adams Scarlet. Dr. Davis also gave me 
another link in that romantic chain. After 
the marriage of these two brothers and their 
ordination as ministers of the gospel, a bright 
joung lawyer in the city of Philadelphia 
saw the newspaper reports and immediately 
surmised that these two young men were 
his own long-lost brothers, and hunting them 
up found to his great delight that it was even 
so. He was an older brother, just old enough 
when abandoned to remember that he had two 
younger brothers. Three unusually bright 
men from one lowly family, of unknown pedi- 
gree.* 



*The objection may be made to this incident that the antece- 
dents of these boys are not known; they may have been good, 
very likely were; hence the incident proves nothing on the one 
side or on the other of the subject under discussion. 

All this is admitted, but the incident is given because it repre- 
sents a large class of the children we are called upon to care for— 
children whose antecedents are unknown. They are counted as 
unfortunate because unknown. The late George W. Childs, of 
^Philadelphia, would belong to this class. Some of the brightest 



HEREDITY. 35 

One Sabbath morning, in the First M. E. 
Church of St. Paul, Minn., after an address by 
the Kev. E. P. Savage, superintendent of the 
"Minnesota Children's Home Society/' the pas- 
tor of the church stated to his people that 
when a little boy of five years old he was 
brought from the slums of New York city with 
a carload of other boys and "dumped out on 
the prairies of Minnesota/' and now the bril- 
liant and much-loved pastor of one of the larg- 
est churches in the Northwest. When he had 
finished his statement, a fine-looking, well- 
dressed, gentlemanly-appearing stranger in 
the rear of the congregation arose and asked 
the privilege of making his statement. "I, 
too/' he said, "like this pastor, when a little 
boy, was brought from the Five Points in New 
York city out to the prairies of the West." He 
was at that time Governor of North Dakota, a 
man of noble character, of brilliant mind, and 
loved and honored by all w T ho knew him. 

Here were tw^o of the brightest and most 
useful men in the great Northwest in one con- 
gregation one Sabbath morning; and both of 
them, w T hen little boys, from the slums of New 
York city! . 

I insert these two pictures side by side, be- 
cause, as Providence would have it, these two 
men, when little, abandoned waifs from New 
York City, were brought west on the same car, 
and occupied the same car seat together, about 

children we have ever received belong to this class and takea 
from almshouses, too! For several specimens of this class of 
children see pp. 75, 79, 80. 



3G 



HEREDITY. 



thirty-six years ago. They were brought to 
Noblesville, Indiana, and there placed in sep- 
arate families to be trained for grandly suc- 
cessful lives — the one through a business ca- 
reer and the law, into a Governor's chair in 





Ex-Governor Burke. 



Governor Brady of Alaska. 



North Dakota, and the other through a Pres- 
byterian pulpit and a Missionary to the same 
Mgh position in Alaska. 

Some time ago I requested the Kev. W. I. 
Sweet, pastor of the Congregational Church in 
Passaic, N. J., to furnish me with some facts 
regarding the late Hon. Henry Wilson, once 
Vice-President of the United States. Mr. 
Sweet was for several years a pastor in the 
neighborhood of Mr. Wilson's home, in New 
Hampshire. 



HEREDITY. 37 

Under date of October 29th, 1896, he thus 
writes : 

"Since seeing you I have been up in New Hampshire to at- 
tend a funeral and have made use of the opportunity to make 
some inquiries in regard to Vice-President Wilson.* * * He 
was born in a home of squalor and intemperance. When he 
was ten years of age he was bound to a family for whom he 
was to work until twenty-one, and receive as remuneration 
^100 and a yoke of oxen. He remained for that time, and re- 
ceived the yoke of oxen and the $100. While with this family 
he attended a district school in the winter for a short time 
each year. This family, fortunately, were people of excel- 
lent minds, and had a love for education, and he being of a 
like frame of mind caught the desire to make the most of his 
privileges. All the people in the village became interested in 
him because of his aptness to learn and his insatiable desire 
for knowledge. I found that several families held letters 
written in his later years, expressing his appreciation for 
kindness shown in loaning him books to read. There were 
many good books in these New England homes, and fortu- 
nately they fell into hands where they were assimilated by a 
strong and growing mind. 

"His name, real name, was Colbath; but when he came to 
mature years, just what age I do not know, he had his name 
changed to Wilson. He applied to the Legislature of New 
Hampshire in the regular way for this. 

«* * * After his first election to the United States Sen- 
ate, he gave his friends a dinner at a noted Boston hotel. The 
table was set with not one wine glass upon it. 'Where are the 
glasses?' asked several of the guests, loud enough to remind 
their host that they did not like sitting down to a wineless 
dinner. 'Gentlemen,' said Mr. Wilson, rising and speaking 
with a great deal of feeling, 'you know my friendship for you, 
and my obligation to you. Great as they are, they are not 
great enough to maKe me forget the rock whence I was hewn 
and the pit whence I was dug. Some of you know how the 
curse of intemperance overshadowed my youth. That I 
might escape I fled from my early surroundings. For what I 
^am, I am indebted, under God, to my temperance vow and my 



38 HEREDITY. 

adherence to it. Call for what you want to eat, and, if the- 
hotel can provide it, it shall be forthcoming; but wines and! 
liquors cannot come to this table with my consent, because I 
will not spread in the path of another the snare from which^ 
I escaped.' 

"The entire company arose and showed the brave Senator 
that men admire the man who has the courage of his convic- 
tions. They gave him three rousing cheers!'' 

In the "New York Independent" of March 
3d, 1892, appeared a "symposium" — on the sub- 
ject of Heredity — from various experts in the 
care of unfortunate children, juvenile delin- 
quents, &c. In this "symposium" many inter- 
esting statements and valuable suggestions are 
made by leaders of National repute. I quote 
first from Mr. Israel C. Jones, Esq., superinten- 
dent House of Refuge, Randall's Island, N. Y.: 

"I can best allude to the influence of heredity by relating 
one or two of many remarkable instances that have come 
under my observation. Thirty years ago there was a depraved 
family living adjacent to what is now a part of the city of 
New York. The mother was not only dishonest, but exceed- 
ingly intemperate, wholly neglectful of her duties as a mother, 
and frequently served terms in jail until she finally died. The 
father was also dissipated and neglectful. It was a miserable 
existence for the children. 

"Two of the little boys, in connection with two other boys 
in the neighborhood, were arrested, tried and found guilty of 
entering a house in the daytime and stealing. In course of 
time both of these boys were indentured. One remained in 
his place and the other left for another part of the country, 
where he died. He was a reputable lad. 

"The first boy, in one way and another, got a few pennies 
together with which he purchased books. After a time he 
proposed to his master that he be allowed to present himself 
for examination as a teacher. The necessary consent was- 



HEREDITY. 3^ 

given, he presented himself, and was awarded a 'grade A' 
certificate. 

"Two years from that time he came to the House of Refuge 
as proud as a man could be, and exhibited to me his certificate. 
He then entered a law office, diligently pursued his studies, 
and was admitted to the bar. He was made a judge, and is- 
now chief magistrate of the court in the city where he lives. 

"His sister, a little girl, used to come to the Refuge with- 
her mother, wearing nothing but a thin cloak in very cold 
weather, almost perishing with the cold. As soon as this 
young man got on his feet he rescued the little girl. He 
placed her in a school, she finally graduated from the Normal 
School, and to-day holds an excellent position in the schools 
in the State where she lives." 

Again he says: 

"Children are not driven to the streets on account of thiev- 
ing; theft is a consequence, a result, not a cause. Boys that 
have any knowledge of the rights of property will not steal if 
they can get what they want without doing so: If they have 
no conscience, if they have not been trained to habits of hon- 
esty, and to provide for their wants in a proper manner, why 
they will take what they can get without any feeling of re- 
morse. That, of course, is theft; but it by no means indicates 
that they are really depraved. I will give an instance to illus- 
trate this statement. In 1863, a boy, eight or nine years of 
age, was committed to the House of Refuge, charged with 
stealing an old dress and an old shawl. Other boys were con- 
cerned with him. John (the boy) said that they sold the stuff 
for fifty cents, that he never received a penny of the proceeds, 
but was sent to the House of Refuge; the other boy stole his 
share of the money. That boy grew to be a man, and to-day 
occupies a pulpit not a hundred miles from the city of New 
York, and stands very high in the communion with which he- 
is connected. I believe he is a Doctor of Divinity to-day. He 
made a visit to the House of Refuge long after he was a 
preacher, and, in an address to the boys, told them exactly 
where he sat in the school, how he progressed from class to- 
class, where he came from, and all his experiences. 



40 HEREDITY. 

"This incident will illustrate that there was no moral ob- 
liquity in that boy, notwithstanding he was guilty of a theft 
in early youth. What became of his companions in that 
offense I do not know. 

"Here is another illustration: One of our inmates was a boy 
whose father went to the war and was killed. The family 
were poor and lived in a tenement house in Mulberry street. 
There were two sisters and this little boy, their brother. 
After he had been here a couple of years or more there was an 
opportunity to place him with a family in New Jersey. He 
was indentured and served his time. It happened that the 
family into which he was placed belonged to the Roman 
Catholic communion, and he came from a Roman Catholic 
family. Where he was located in New Jersey there was no 
Roman Catholic church maintained, and the children went to 
the Protestant Sunday-school in the neighborhood. The boy 
developed considerable activity of mind and ambition. A 
lady in Philadelphia became interested in him, encouraged 
Trim to study, paid his way through college, and eventually he 
TDecame a minister in the Methodist Church. 

"About ten years ago I received a letter from a man on the 
east side of town, making inquiry in regard to this lad. I 
answered the letter and asked him what particular interest 
he had in the boy. He replied that he had married his sister 
and that the boy's other sister was living with them; and 
now, after more than 20 years, they felt a desire to learn 
something of the history of their brother. I wrote to him that 

the brother was serving a church in the town of , New 

Jersey; if they should go> there they would see him, and if 
they went on a Sunday they would hear him preach. They 
did go on a Sunday, heard mm preach, and when the ser- 
vices were over, made themselves known. It was the first 
time that the sisters and the brother had met in over 20 
years. The sisters (so it appeared) had avoided making any 
inquiry in regard to their brother, believing that he had gone 
to the bad because he had been sent to the House of Refuge, 
and they did not care to be dragged down by any disgrace he 
may have brought upon them." 

The Hon. E. T. Gerry, President of the So- 



HEKEDITY. 



41 



-eiety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 
says : 

"I have not yet solved the problem of heredity. I am in- 
vestigating it now in various ways. In the work of our 
Society we have had instances of heredity, but not such as I 




:am prepared to mention. We cannot yet tell as to how far 
Uie cases are really hereditary. Where a parent is steeped in 
sin, and his child is continually living in an atmosphere of 
•crime, and the course of the parent is one which is at variance 
with the law, I suppose the chances are that the child will 
follow in the parent's footsteps; but how far the hereditary 
taint exists I cannot tell. For instance, a father (a criminal) 
dies, leaving a child of tender years, so young that it does not 
know either of its parents. I am not yet prepared to say how 
far the criminal course of the pareut or parents will affect tne 
child. 

"In regard to the need of more churches and Sunday-schools, 
particularly in the down-town districts of the city, where the 
poor live, I say, of course, the more religious influences that 
are brought to bear on children in any way the better. In 
my judgment, religion is the great and only cure for the dis- 
ease of crime. And I do not believe that any child is thor- 
oughly and incorrigibly bad, because to believe that would be 
to doubt the grace of God." 



42 HEREDITY. 

Mr. C. Loring Brace, Secretary of the Chil- 
dren's Aid Society, New York — a society that 
has cared for over 80,000 children — gives his» 
experience as follows : 

"Our investigations in regard to the family antecedents of 
our boys are not specially directed to the interesting questions 
of heredity. At the same time we are constantly having cases 
brought before us which conflict with this scientific proposi- 
tion. I have in mind the case of a young girl whom we res- 
cued from bad surroundings some years ago. She was an< 
orphan, and we had considerable difficulty in obtaining pos- 
session of her, the matter having to go before the courts. 
After we had obtained a good home for her in the West the 
relatives kidnapped her; but the people with whom she had 
been living, through legal measures, obtained her again. 
She is an educated girl of good principles. When, however, 
she came from the West to see her sisters and aunt, it was 
found that all of them were either drunkards or women of 
ill repute. 

"I have the case of a boy, who is now in a good home, doing 
very well, and who does not show the least taint of depravity. 
In his family history it was discovered that his father killed 
his mother. The father was imprisoned, and soon after his 
discharge, he committed suicide. The boy's sister was killed 
in a house of ill-fame on Bleecker street. On the other hand, 
another sister is doing very well and another brother is pros- 
perous and of good character. 

"In a recent collection of letters from the boys, which we 
have issued, is an account of n lad who had not answered our 
letters for 20 years and was thought to have 'gone to the 
bad,' and who had committed many disagreeable offenses;, 
yet at last he comes out all right. We have a letter about a 
large boy who had disappeared and was held as a failure and' 
a useless subject, who turns up as Mayor of his town and ? 
member of the Legislature. 

"The great majority of our boys do well in the country 
homes to which we send them. Hundreds of interesting an* 
truthful incidents might be given in proof of this statement- 



HEREDITY. 



43 



'The latest report at hand shows that one of our boys is a 
-cashier of the Citizens' Bank of Indiana; another, after pass- 
ing an examination at Yale College, went as missionary to 
Alaska, where he is now a government official, and soon ex- 
pects to be appointed Commissioner; another married a cousin 
of his employer, and is now a successful Methodist minister. 
Probably the most remarkable case is that of a boy we took 
out West 33 years ago." [Ex-Governor Burke of North 
Dakota. See p. 36.] 

"I believe that the tendency to viciousness may exist in the 
child, but very often it is dormant; the child is not yet old 
•enough to allow it to have been developed. I believe if such 
a boy were to continue to live in the same environment to 
which he had been accustomed from birth — associating with 
the children of his class, many of whom might be worse than 
"liimself — I believe that under those circumstances the heredi- 
tary taint would, in course of time, show itself. But we get 
such boys when they are young; we transplant them to a 
wholesome farm life, where they soon learn something of the 
amenities of the family and domestic existence. If they had 
this dormant, hereditary tendency it is soon eradicated under 
ithe new and wholesome conditions in which they are placed." 




We close these interesting statements from 



44 HEREDITY. 

the "Independent's" symposium, with the fol- 
lowing from Mr. William F. Barnard, Esq. r 
Superintendent Five Points House of In- 
dustry : 

"I am not prepared to say that I believe in the theory of 
immediate heredity. I do not think that it necessarily follows 
that because a father or mother, or both, are vicious their 
child will be the same. I can give proof to the contrary, at 
least to my own satisfaction. We have had in this home chil- 
dren who were just as bright, gentle, well-behaved and intel- 
ligent as any children I have ever seen, and the parents of 
those children, respectively, were as wretched and miserable 
as have ever lived on the face of the earth. 

"I recall a child who came from the slums in Baxter street 
whose father spent a good part of his time on Blackwell's 
Island because of crime, and that he was a drunkard goes 
without saying. The mother was as bad as the father, and 
yet the child — a girl — was as delicate and sensitive a child as 
I have ever seen. When she came to this institution she re- 
sponded at once to the better surroundings in which she found 
herself placed. What became of her? She is now the wife of 
a highly respectable physician of this city, and has a family 
of bright and beautiful children. Now, if according to the 
modern philosophers, we say wickedness is hereditary, the- 
mother of these lovely children should have been a bad 
woman. 

"We have two girls in the Jbive Points House of Industry 
to-day whose mother was as bad a woman as you would find 
in the town; she was not only intemperate but immoral; she 
died on Blackwell's Island. I will place those children along- 
side of any children in the city, no matter how well brought 
up, for intelligence and appreciation of all the decencies and' 
nicer phases of life. 

"I claim that even if the immediate relatives were bad, 
there have been some good people back somewhere, whether 
you go back one, two or three generations. If I believed in 
the so-called law of heredity, as it has been explained by some 
modern writers — that because a parent is bad it necessarily 



HEREDITY. 45- 

follows that the descendants will be bad — I would feel in- 
clined to give up philanthropic work in despair. It is very 
unjust to say that because a father and mother are bad their 
children must necessarily follow in their footsteps. That has 
about it too much of t^e v,.d World ring of caste; of the days 
when, if you were born in the artisan class you must make up 
your mind always to remain there; you must not consider 
yourself as having a right to belong anywhere else." 




William Bryan McKinley. 




CHAPTER HI. 

UT it is the purpose of this discussion 
not simply to make general state- 
ments. We wish to get down under- 
neath the surface and discover causes, so far 
as possible. 

By the law of heredity the child should in- 
herit the peculiarities of the parent, physi- 
cally, mentally and morally. If, for instance, 
the parent is a thief, a professional one, the 
child may be expected to inherit a thieving dis- 
position, and readily follow in the business of 
the parent. If the parent is excessively proud, 
or avaricious, or hard-hearted and cruel, or 
kind and benevolent; if the parent has a pecu- 
liar taste for the study of mathematics, or lan- 
guages, or music, or drawing; if wideawake 
and aggressive, or indolent and shiftless; if 
content with life in the slums, at home in 
squalor and filth, or ambitious of high position 
and noble attainment — by the law of heredity 
the child will be expected to "take after" the 
parent — prove his title to be a "chip from the 
old block." 

But right here coi^ie in certain strange and 
puzzling facts that practically so completely 
complicate the whole question and mix it up, 
that we become confused and liable to mis- 
take as soon as we venture to predict from the 
known character of the parent what will be the 
natural bent of the child. 



HEREDITY. 47 

Two Parents. 

a. There are two parents, and the child in- 
herits from both. Suppose, then, that the 
mother is unusually benevolent and kind- 
hearted and the father is unusually avaricious 
and hard-hearted, who will decide beforehand 
what will be the character of the child? As 
-a matter of fact one child may take after the 
mother, the second from the father, and the 
third be a cross between the two. 

In the beginning of my work for the Chil- 
dren's Home Society in Iowa, I met an old man 
who had been addicted to the drink habit all 
his life. A peculiar case, for he drank almost 
constantly, was literally soaked with liquor 
nearly all the time, but never staggered under 
its influence, and was never unbalanced in 
mind so as to be unable to attend to his busi- 
ness. He had only one son who grew to man- 
hood, and everybody predicted he would be- 
come a drunkard; but strange to say, he in- 
herited his mother's strong aversion to the vile 
stuff and could never be induced to meddle 
with it in any form. 

This simple fact, that there are two parents, 
and the child inherits from both, complicates 
and mixes up the whole question of heredity; 
for the father and the mother are never just 
alike. They are quite apt to-be the very an- 
tipodes of each other. In fact, it is the differ- 
ences rather than the likenesses that usually 
prove attractive and draw two young hearts 
4 



48 HEREDITY. 

together. The wife wins and holds her place 
in the husband's affections, not because she is 
his likeness, but his complement; she fills up 
the lacks, the deficiencies in his nature; sup- 
plies the wants, if it be a true union, so that the 
two together make one rounded, complete 
whole. 

And so, admitting the law of heredity to be 
always uniform in its w r orking, who shall de- 
cide the character of the child when father and 
mother differ? If father and mother, differ- 
ing in other points, are alike in some one pro- 
pensity; for instance, if both parents are large- 
hearted, kind, benevolent, or if both parents 
are alike avaricious, close-fisted, it would be 
easy to predict in the child a large, active de- 
velopment of this one propensity. 

But there is another point to be considered: 
If both father and mother are thieves, for in- 
stance, or robbers by profession, the chances 
are, as already stated, that the child will be a 
native-born thief, unless it should be a case of 
"atavism" (inheriting from a grandparent or 
more remote ancestor); or unless father or 
mother have been driven into a criminal life by 
some dire fate and against the constant protest 
of their better natures. In such a case the child 
may inherit the better nature. As a matter of 
fact, this latter supposition is probably the 
true one in the majority of cases. Criminals 
as a class are bright men, and oftentimes in- 
herit a large amount of nobility of nature; are 
from good families, and when young were ad- 



HEREDITY. 49 

mitted into the best society; very likely mar- 
ried young ladies of good character, with the 
best of antecedents, whose whole nature is a 
constant protest against the life into which 
their husbands have dragged them. And 
the husbands themselves may have become 
criminals, not because they loved such a 
life, or inherited the criminal propensity, 
but because their environments have been 
unfortunate ; or perchance, in an evil 
hour — and hour of unusual temptation — 
they have yielded; and the one sin has pre- 
pared the way for the second, and the second 
for the third, until character has been de- 
stroyed and fond hopes dashed to earth. 

Under such circumstances what, presuni- 
ablv, would be the character of the child? 
In the first place, the mother probably has 
the stronger moral character, and inas- 
much as the stronger nature usually con- 
trols the heredities of the child, in this 
case the child will be more apt to in- 
herit from the mother than from the father 
as to its moral character. But in the second 
place, the father himself may, in the main, 
have good qualities; his propensity toward a 
criminal life is not strongly developed; very 
likely his criminal acts have been prompted 
largely by his love of money, or possibly by a 
desire to secure a home or other comforts for 
his family. In any such case, with the best of 
his father's nature against it, and the whole 
nature of the mother loudly protesting and 



50 



HEREDITY. 



shrinking from such a life, it would be almost 
a miracle if the child should inherit the crimi- 
nal propensity. 

And very much the same can be said, and in 
the interests of truth must be said, of many 
other children with unfortunate antecedents. 




Children Whose Father s Drank. 



Some of the very best men in the country are 
led into the drink habit. Men with the best 
blood of the land flowing in their veins fall 



HEREDITY. 51 

under the power of this fell destroyer, fall into 
the ditch too, and drag their families down 
with them into poverty and shame. The large 
majority of all the children we are called upon 
to place come to us directly or indirectly 
through the appetite for strong drink. 

Now, are these children liable to be born 
with the appetite already kindled? In the 
majority of cases, no; in some cases, yes. a. 
If both parents drink habitually, even though 
moderately, yes. b. If the one parent w T ho 
drinks is the stronger nature, stronger physi- 
cally, and of strong, unyielding will, again, yes; 
for the stronger nature is supposed to control 
the heredities of the child. The quotation 
from Dr. Crowthers, of Hartford (see p. 23) 
furnishes an illustration of this condition of 
things : 

"If the father be a moderate drinker, and the mother a ner- 
vous, consumptive woman, or one with a weak, nervous organi- 
zation, inebriety often follows in the children." 

That is, wiien the mother is the weaker ves- 
sel, the father is likely to control the charac- 
teristics of the child. 

The interesting and striking cases quoted 
from Dr. Pope, of Washington, D. 0., (see p. 
22) would nearly all have to be explained in the 
same way. Those old Kentucky families, 
"highly aristrocratic, talented and wealthy," 
were noted all over the country as very strong 
characters, of iron will and iron physique; and 
therefore, would, almost uniformly, give the 



52 HEREDITY. 

character traits to the child. It mattered lit- 
tle who they married, the new infusion was the 
weaker nature : that old Kentucky "blue 
blood" was the controlling factor ; and 
whether it was found in the father or the 
mother, it carried the day in the make-up of 
the coming child. And hence, so uniformly the 
children seem to inherit the appetite for strong 
drink. However, just how much of this appe- 
tite for strong drink was really hereditary, and 
how much of it was due to the environments 
we will not discuss just now; a careful study 
of all the facts might at least greatly modify 
the sweeping conclusions so confidently pre- 
sented by the author above quoted. 

But fortunately for our country and for our 
race, such examples as these from Kentucky 
^re the exceptions and not the rule. The 
rule is— 

a. That the mothers do not drink. It is al- 
most a rare exception to find a mother who is 
addicted in any form to the drink habit, even as 
a medicine. There are some, however, who do, 
in the aggregate a large multitude, and they 
are found in every portion of our country, 
among the highest as well as the lowest; but 
they form so small a minority that I am justi- 
fied in using the expression "almost a rare ex- 
ception." 

And then, too, those weak, nervous, con- 
sumptive women mentioned by the New Eng- 
land physician belong as a rule to the better 
classes, the higher classes as they style them- 



HEREDITY. 53 

selves, the upper strata of society; and these 
have but few children, and these few, if the 
parents die, are usually well provided for, and 
do not come into the care of any child-saving 
agency, and hence are outside of our 
special discussion. Very few of the mothers 
whose children we have to deal with are ad- 
dicted to the drink habit in any form. If, 
therefore, any of our children inherit the appe- 
tite for strong drink, they must get it from the 
father and not the mother, with very rare ex- 
ceptions. 

But again the rule is — 

6. That the drink habit, when it gets control 
of a man, gradually weakens him; both his will 
power, his moral sense and his physical force 
are undermined; so that whatever may have 
been true at the first, he gradually makes of 
himself the weaker vessel as compared with his 
wife. While on the other hand, the wife of a 
drinking husband is very likely growing 
stronger, both physically and morally, by the 
very necessities of the situation. The bitter- 
est disappointment and the hottest of life's fur- 
naces have added strength to her character, 
while the necessity of hard physical toil to 
keep the wolf from the door gives her increas- 
ing physical strength. And so, w^hile the 
father is growing weaker, the mother is grow- 
ing stronger; and hence the more the father be- 
comes a slave to his unnatural appetite, the 
less likely is he to control the tastes and the 
personal characteristics of his child, as against 



54 



HEKEDITY. 



the sturdy character of the mother and her 
growing dislike to the habits of her husband. 
In fact, such a mother, with such a fiery fur- 
nace to ennoble and purify her life, may be- 
queath to her child an inheritance that has in 
it elements of strength and beauty denied even 
to more fortunate families. 

As an illustration of this point, I insert here 
the pictures of three children, a sister and twa 
brothers, w r ho have come under the care of the 
New Jersey Children's Home Society. 




The father had become so completely a slave 
to his cups that his natural affection was un- 
dermined — a miserable wreck in every direc- 
tion. He drank up all his earnings, leaving 



HEREDITY. 55 

his poor wife to earn all the bread for four 
small children to eat. And when the mother 
died and this oldest daughter tried to keep 



house for him, he not only left his children to 
starve, but treated this dear girl with such out- 
rageous cruelty that the neighbors had to in- 
terfere and come to their rescue. 

Let now my readers who are skilled in "Na- 
ture reading" scan the faces of these children, 
and see if you can discover any traces what- 
ever of the drunkard's brand, either physically 
or morally. It is true that this dear girl w T as 
first reported to me as having "fits;" and had it 
been "fits" of the ordinary kind, would have 
furnished sad evidence of the father's influ- 
ence in her heredities. But I learned, upon in- 
quiry, that the "fits" were simply "fainting 
spells," from heart failure, induced by want of 
proper nourishment, by overwork and by fear. 
Three months after placing her in a good Chris- 
tion family, she had not only gained 30 pounds 
in flesh, but gotten all over her "fits." 



56 HEREDITY. 

But look again at her picture; she appears 
to be at least 15 years of age; she was not quite 
11 when the picture was taken. Worn out 
and prematurely old; and yet the plain evi- 
dences of a noble, womanly nature already 
being purified by a fiery trial. There are not 
many girls under 11 j^ears of age who would 
undertake to keep house, first for her mother, 
so that she could go out and earn the bread for 
the family to eat, and then after the mother's 
death, for her father, and persist in it through 
crudest treatment from him, and want of 
food, until her physical system was well nigh 
wrecked. 

And please note that elder boy's physiog- 
nomy. If you could pick two of the noblest 
parents on earth, father and mother both of 
royal nature and character, you could hardly 
look from such a union for a boy with a nobler 
countenance or more promising appearance. 
Those children evidently inherit from their 
mother, said to have been a noble, Christian 
woman. Their father had made himself so 
completely a wreck that his influence upon his 
offspring is scarcely discoverable. And yet if 
one wished to enter more minutely into this in- 
vestigation of family heredities, there could 
easily be discovered evidences of the gradual 
degeneracy of the father, for the oldest daugh- 
ter bears some little resemblance to her father 
in her physical appearance, w r hile the youngest 
child has scarcely a trace of the father in any 
direction. 



HEREDITY. 57 

And just here may be a fitting place to state 
another conclusion I have reached after some 
observation. We have received and placed in 
good homes, with very satisfactory results, 
several children whose mothers were imbe- 
ciles; not extreme cases, but too weak-minded 
to take care of themselves; and yet the chil- 
dren reveal no trace whatever of the mental 
deficiency of the mother. As in the previous 
case, the one weaker parent contributes the 
least. The child inherits from the stronger 
nature and hence in these cases the father's 
mentality controls in the heredities of the 
child. If in these cases the mother should 
happen to be stronger physically, the child will 
Tery likely inherit his mother's physical and 
Ms father's mental characteristics. 

We have had one very sad and very peculiar 
case; three little children offered to us whose 
mother was an imbecile, not an extreme case, 
but far below the average in mental calibre. 
The father was a hard drinker; bright enough 
when sober, but a maudlin simpleton when 
under the influence of liquor. These children 
were begotten when the father teas stupefied by 
drink. And although the children have splen- 
didly developed foreheads, with every out- 
ward appearance of mental strength, poor 
things, the father's maudlin condition and the 
mother's mental weaknesses are the children's 
inheritance. 

Our conclusion then is, that, as a rule, the 
child inherits from the stronger nature; that if 



58 HEREDITY. 

the father be mentally bright and clear-headed 
at the time of conception, the mother may be- 
a pronounced imbecile, it will not seriously 
affect the mental condition of the child; and 
that if the mother is the stronger mentally, the 
child will inherit chiefly from the mother, and 
the father's condition, whether under the influ- 
ence of liquor or clear-headed, will not be so- 
apparent in the child's inheritances. 

Prenatal Influence. 

6. But the fact that there are two parents is 
not the only perplexing fact in deciding the 
question of heredity. There comes in another 
altogether uncertain quantity in foretelling 
the character of the child; the environments of 
the mother before the child is born, sometimes 
so potent as to greatly modify, if not com- 
pletely change, the character of the child for 
life. 

This is a delicate matter to write about, and 
yet one of most momentous consequence. 

"There has grown up in America an artificially imposed* 
silence upon all questions relating to maternity until that holy 
thing has become a matter almost of shame. Will not the- 
women try and break this down? It seems to me life will be 
truer and nobler the more we recognize that there is no indeli- 
cacy in the^ climax and coronation of creative power, but 
rather that it is the highest glory of our race." Lady Henry- 
Somerset. 

"All the educational institutions in the world, all the benevo- 
lent, industrial and reform societies, all the anti-tobacco advo- 
cates, all the temperance societies, and all the divines in the- 



HEREDITY. 59 

-world combined and working harmoniously together, cannot do 
as much in a lifetime of effort, in the elevation of mankind, as 
can a mother in nine months of prenatal effort. This is an 
important assertion, and yet is one that has law, right and 
God on its side." "The Science of a New Life," by John 
€owan, M.D., p. 137. 

This is a very sweeping assertion, perhaps a 
greatly exaggerated one. But certainly the 
subject is vastly important in any intelligent 
discussion of the subject of heredity. 

"Positive and well-established as is the influence of heredity 
upon the life of man, it is by no means the only destiny shap- 
ing agency which operates before the child is born. The 
.general environment, the mental attitude of the mother, and 
the moral and intellectual atmosphere in which she spends the 
months before the infant's birth, exert a very positive effect 
upon the life of the offspring — an effect which has been but 
little considered, owing to the almost universal silence pre- 
served by civilization on all questions relating to proper gen- 
eration. Hence, a large proportion of people are ignorant of 
the power of prenatal influence. * * * It has only been in 
recent years that any serious investigation along the lines of 
modern critical methods have been undertaken in this field of 
research, but the results are overwhelmingly conclusive. And 
with the agitation of the question the data of reliable facts 
are rapidly increasing, and prove how much the future of the 
-child depends upon the environments and mental attitude of 
the mother during the months which elapse prior to its birth." 

The above is a sort of introduction to a very 
interesting discussion of this subject in the 
"Arena" of July, 1895, by the editor. The 
large array of facts and incidents he collates 
are certainly a startling revelation to many 
of us. 

It certainlv seems a reasonable conclusion 



60 HEREDITY. 

that if the child inherits equally from father 
and mothei, its inheritance from the father is* 
secured and assured at the moment of concep- 
tion, while the inheritance from the mother is 
spread over the nine months of prenatal life; 
and if so, the condition of the mother during 
those nine months must have everything to do 
with the character as w^ell as the amount of 
her contribution to the heredities of the child. 

But while this statement seems entirely rea- 
sonable, few of us, I opine, will be prepared for 
the really startling conclusions reached by the 
facts and incidents collated in the article in 
question, that a mother can almost completely 
change the w T hole character and life of her 
child, imparting to it not simply her average 
self, the general bent of her life, what she in- 
herited from her ancestry, but the particular 
bend or direction her faculties may happen to 
take during these nine months; making of her 
child a poet, or philosopher, or soldier, or phy- 
sician, or lawyer, or musician; imparting to it 
a happy, sunshiny disposition, or the opposite; 
even deciding relatively whether it shall be a 
clergyman or a criminal. 

We give a portion only of the incidents re- 
lated in the article under consideration, and 
these much abbreviated: 

"A wife who is bitterly disappointed in her husband and in 
married life becomes a mother of three children. Before the 
first one was born she became so wretched that she could not 
refrain from crying every little while. And the child re- 
flected in a startling manner the mental condition of the 



HEREDITY. 61 

mother during those previous months, frequently sobbing and 
crying even while playing with its toys. Before the second- 
child was born, the husband would become very harsh and 
even cruel at times in the treatment of his wife, and then at- 
tempt to make it all up by caresses and kisses, which the wife 
learned to hate more than his harsh treatment. And strangely 
enough this second child, who was physically a beautiful little 
thing, would often be picked up and hugged by friends and 
callers, but would invariably cry out in bitterest tones: 'I 
hate to be tissed, I hate to be tissed!' The mother turned to 
literature for a solace, becoming absorbed in Swedenborg's 
works; and the third child when quite young evinced a passion 
for metaphysical thought, would eagerly listen to the reading 
of books far deeper than could be comprehended by the aver- 
age child. 

"Another very marked instance of prenatal influence is found 
in the family of a leading actor and actress who are also great 
students of economic and philosophical problems. During the- 
nine months preceding the birth of one of their little girls, the 
mother became engrossed in Herbert Spencer's writings, and 
other deep literature. She lived in. a kind of mental intoxica- 
tion. The child reflects the mother's mental condition in a 
most striking manner; she is one of the finest reasoners I 
have ever known among children, a born philosopher, and a 
poet and story writer of great prominence. A second child 
was born after the mother had been for several months re- 
hearsing and playing a cheerful, lovable and winsome charac- 
ter; and the little girl is a reflex of this character, a veritable 
sunbeam, her little heart going out in love to everyone. 

"The case of Napoleon Bonaparte affords an interesting 
illustration. His natural inclination for war while still a mere 
child was remarkable. The subject was ever in his mind; he 
was constantly talking of it and anxiously looking forward 
to the time when he could enter upon a military life. When 
he was only a few years old, he delighted in thunderstorms;. 
he loved to hear the peals of thunder and to see the lightning. 
This tendency was so strong that sometimes it was impossi- 
ble to induce him to seek shelter during a storm; instead he 
would expose himself to the elements, delighting in their fury. 
Although he had four brothers, none of them ever displayed 



62 HEREDITY. 

any fondness for war while young, nor at any time marked 
military ability. This remarkable instinct for war is ac- 
counted for as follows: Napoleon's mother was surrounded 
with scenes of battle, skirmishes and quick marches, during 
the months preceding his birth. She accompanied her husband 
on horseback upon a military campaign, and moreover deeply 
interested herself in strategy and the arts of war. She thus 
conferred upon her son a love of conquest and a military 
genius before which all Europe trembled for many years. 

"Robert Burns is referred to as an instance of remarkable 
genius imparted through prenatal influence; 'the mother had an 
excellent memory for old songs and ballads, and she sang 
them constantly as she went about her household duties.' 

"Then follows various instances of great musical talent, or 
at least a remarkable taste for music being imparted in the 
same way. The celebrated Wolfgang had a younger brother 
who had no musical talent whatever, or even desire for it, 
and the statement is made that the mother had cultivated 
music during the early years of her married life and was sur- 
rounded by musical people; but afterwards abandoned it, and 
even conceived a dislike for it; and the two brothers born 
during these two periods in the mother's life reflect perfectly 
her mental attitude toward music. 

"Another mother has two sons, the one becoming a physi- 
cian and the other a lawyer, accounted for in the strange fact 
that in the first instance the mother was studying medicine and 
in the second law during the prenatal period. 

"A mother who had been in the habit of sitting before a 
group of statuary, became greatly enamored of one little 
figure, representing Cupid in repose, his cheek resting upon the 
back of nis hand. When her baby was born, he not only bore 
a striking resemblance to the little marble Cupid, but 'on 
seeing him the next day in his cradle, I perceived he had 
assumed the precise attitude of the statuette, the cheek upon 
the back of the hand;' and this position he invariably, and of 
course involuntarily adopted during sleep, not only throughout 
infancy, but up to advanced boyhood, when I lost sight of 
Mm." 

All these are certainly very remarkable in- 



HEREDITY. 63 

cidents. I will add two that have been re- 
lated to me personally — 

1. The wife of a prominent editor in this 
State (New Jersey) was kind enough to de- 
scribe to me a strange peculiarity of her own 
little daughter, a very bright and pretty girl 
of seven or eight years, who never laughs. The 
mother said she had never been known to 
laugh but two or three times during her life 
thus far; and she accounted for the strange 
fact by saying that during the year before her 
child was born, she had passed through the 
deepest sorrows of her life. Her ow^n loved 
mother, then a very dear sister, then other 
warm friends had been taken away one by one 
so that it had been almost one unbroken sor- 
row the entire year, and the sad results were 
stamped thus strangely upon the child. There 
is nothing gloomy or sour or morose about the 
child; she has a sweet disposition and amiable, 
but never laughs! 

2. A physician, also in this State, who has 
given much study to these questions, gave me 
a most significant incident. A foolish wife, 
determined not to become a mother, applied to 
him, her family physician, for assistance. He 
flatly refused. She applied to several reputa- 
ble physicians; they all declined. In despera- 
tion, she came the second time to her family 
physician and declared her determination at 
all hazards to get rid of the unwelcome child. 
He expostulated with her and finally, in the 
plainest possible terms, told her of the kind of 



64 HEKEDITY. 

child she was unwittingly educating. By per- 
sistently cherishing a murderous disposition 
at heart, she might confidently look for a crimi- 
nal in her child, and a life of the bitterest re- 
grets for her present folly. And the sequel 
proved his prediction correct; the boy became 
a criminal of the most pronounced type. 

After all the above had been set up by the 
printer and ready for the press, I lighted upon 
an incident so peculiar and yet so pointed that L 
have asked the printer to wait and put it in. 

The incident is related in a sermon upon 
"The Woman of Canaan," by the Eev. John A. 
Dowie, of Chicago, general overseer of the 
Christian Catholic Church. 

He is making the point that this woman of 
Canaan began at the wrong end — she started iiL 
to pray for her daughter possessed of a devil 
when she should have begun by praying for 
herself. 

"You talk about your sons and daughters having devils in* 
them, how did they get there ?" 

And he gives this illustration : 

"Doctor," said a lady to me one day, "Oh, I am broken- 
hearted about my little boy! He is only three years old, and 
he is a little murderer, and he is such a pretty boy, Doctor, 
and so healthy, and so beautiful, and so innocent-looking," 
and then with tears she told me what a determinedly wicked 
spirit that boy had; how he would tear the wings off flies; 
how he would get the kitten, and crush its little head and 
break its legs; how he would bite and kick, and if he got a 
knife, cut: how he had got into mad passion with a little 
baby of six months old, and because the baby would not 



HEREDITY. 65 

repent of something, he was found attempting to choke the 
baby in the cradle. And she said to me: "I don't know what 
to do. Oh, my little boy is grievously afflicted; I feel sure he 
has a devil in him. Pray for him." 

I said: "Madam, that is not the trouble at all. I am not 
going to pray for that little boy. I am going to investigate. 
How did that devil get into him?" 

"Well," she said, "I am sure I do not know," and I looked 
at her and I said: "Madam, I am confident that you lie, and 
that you do know." She was very indignant. "Well," I 
said, "you can be indignant, and go, and 1 expect you will 
go to the devil, if you do go, because I do not take a bit of 
stock in your Christianity. Madam, I am convinced as I sit 
here that the boy has a devil in him, because you had a devil 
in you before he was born." 

The conversation was interrupted, but the 
next day the mother returned and brought her 
boy with her. He had not been in the doctor's 
company long before he crept up behind him 
and gave him "the hardest kick I have had for 
many a year," and then stood back and laughed I 

His mother was going to whip him. I said, "No madam, 
it is you who should get the whipping. We will put the child 
away." So I handed the child over to some one in another 
room, and continued my conversation with the woman. 

After a little further probing the doctor said 
to her plainly: 

"Madam, before this child was born, you tried to murder 
him! You did not want that child to come into the world, 
and you tried to murder him, and you failed." 

She fell back in her chair almost fainting, and she said: "I 
did; God forgive me. I did. I tried three times to murder 
him, but I could not. I hated my own offspring, and I did 
not want him." Then I said: 

"Madam, the spirit of the first murderer came through 



66 HEREDITY. 

Eve disobeying God and obeying the devil. Every instinct 
of her nature became diabolical — a murderess — and in all 
his spiritual nature Cain 'was of that wicked one,' the devil, 
^md came into this world a red-handed murderer with the 
-devil in him, because the devil was in Eve. And you let the 
•devil into your heart — your damning accursed vanity, want- 
ing tb go to theatres and balls; your desire to avoid mater- 
jiity, that you might continue in pleasure and get profit in 
money, made you a murderess, and you have got the reward 
•of it; you have got a Cain — beautiful as the first-born — and 
with the same devil in him." 

Then she cried bitterly, "And is he to live, and slay his 
little brother that he tried the other day to murder in the 
cradle? My God! is he to live so?" 

I replied: "When the devil gets out of you, madam, the 
devil will get out of him. And you have got to stop praying 
for him, and start praying for your own hypocritical self." 

She was a member of the church, a leading lady in the 
<church, with her hands red with blood; for I ascertained 
zfrom he?, though she had failed to kill him, she had man- 
aged to kill the other two. 

Women of America! That damning, withering crime is 
making this nation to be filled with tens of thousands of mur- 
derers; in every city, and in every hamlet, in every country 
district, the curse has come with withering power, and multi- 
tudes are born murderers because their mothers hated to 
have them, and wanted to kill them. 

No more broken-hearted man and woman have I ever seen 
than when she and her husband came to my room a few days 
later, confessed their guilt, besought forgiveness and got it. 
Then I prayed with that child. 

And the sequel showed that when the parents 
had gotten rid of the devil, and found forgive- 
ness, the Lord heard their prayer for the boy 
and he was completely cured! 

I have dwelt thus fully upon this delicate 
but vastly important subject because of its im- 
mensely practical character, and its vital rela- 



HEREDITY. t)T 

tion to the general work of child rescue. 
A good many of the homeless and aban- 
doned children we are called upon to care for 
are illegitimate children — a larger proportion, 
possibly, in the State of New Jersey, than in 
some of the other States, growing out of the 
fact that quite a number of the older "Orphan- 
ages" and "Children's Homes" of the State re- 
fuse to receive illegitimate children, with the 
result that thev are sent to the almshouses. 
And so it comes to pass that many of the chil- 
dren in the almshouses of the State are ille- 
gitimate. And as our Society is conscien- 
tiously attempting to empty the almshouses of 
the State, we are of necessity called upon to 
care for many of this class. And the feeling is- 
everywhere prevalent that an illegitimate 
child is of necessity a child of lust, and must 
inherit an unusual development of "amative* 
ness," and therefore is a dangerous child ta 
fondle and trust in a Christian home. 

Xow, the facts are the very opposite. That 
unfortunate young maiden who has been be- 
trayed into motherhood, has spent nine 
months of the bitterest regrets, of agony un- 
speakable; with shame and disgrace for life 
staring her in the face, she has repented bit- 
terly ten thousand times over for her one hour 
of folly and if there is anything at all in pre- 
natal influence, she will stamp upon her child 
the very opposite of a lustful nature.* Of 
course, if the mother is an abandoned prosti- 

*For an interesting fact upon this point, see foot note on p. 81 



68 HEREDITY. 

tute, following a life of shame, the results 
would be quite different. But the majority, a 
very large majority, I would say at least 95 per 
cent, of the illegitimate children that come un- 
der our care are not the offspring of prostitutes, 
and, therefore, for the reasons stated above, 
are quite as likely to choose pure lives as are 
the offspring of the best and purest families on 
oarth — possibly more so, as may appear 
farther on. 

Conceit of "Our Blood/'' 

c. For there is a third consideration that 
must have a place in any complete discussion 
of the subject of heredity, and that is, the real 
character of the best heredities. The major 
portion of the objections urged by good Chris- 
tian people against receiving into their homes 
and hearts certain children with supposed un- 
fortunate antecedents is the offspring of con- 
ceit, pure conceit in the quality of our blood. 
'"We and our children are A No. 1. The blood 
that flows through our veins is first-class 
blood ; heredities all good. Thank the Lord 
we are not as other men; that Publican 
over there in the slums or carrying the coal- 
hod is low down, 'submerged'; his children are 
born with 'unfortunate antecedents/ and we 
need to be careful what privileges are ac- 
corded them." 

This is simple, simon-pure conceit. Miss 



HEREDITY. 69 

Helen Gardner thus forcibly writes in the 
"Arena" for July, 1894, pp. 148-9: 

"It is sometimes asked if children were changed in the 
cradle, and those of fortunate parentage carried to the slums 
to be nurtured and taught, and those from the slums placed 
in the cradles of luxury, would not all trace of mental, moral 
and physical heredity of a fortunate type disappear from the 
darlings of Murray Hill in their adopted environment of 
squalor and vice; and would not the haggard and half -starved, 
ill-nurtured waifs of Mulberry Bend blossom as the rose in 
strength and virtue in their new environment of luxury and of 
wholesome and healthful surroundings? Just here a digres- 
sion seems necessary; for while I have no doubt that the 
change (even on terms usually implied) would work wonders 
in both sets of infants, still it is to be remembered that for 
such a test to tell anything of real value to science, the ex- 
change would need be made upon another basis from that 
which is generally used as an argument, because it is wrongly 
assumed that the children of luxury, as a rule, are born with 
clean and lofty heredity. This is, alas, so far from the case 
that it is almost a truism that 'the highest and the lowest' 
(meaning the richest and the poorest) are 'nearest together in 
action and farthest apart in appearance only.' They both 
give to their children tainted mental, moral and physical na- 
tures with which to contend. The self-indulgence of the young 
men of the 'upper classes' leaves a burned out, undermined 
and tainted physical heredity a certainty for their children, 
while the ethical tone of such men — their moral fibre — is 
higher only in appearance and the ability to do secretly that 
which puts the tough of Mulberry Bend in the penitentiary 
because he has not the gold to gild his vices and to dazzle thr 
eyes of society. The exchanged children, therefore, would 
not be so totally different in inherited qualities, after all. 
Tney would have alike a tainted ancestry. Their physical na- 
tures are the hotbeds of vices or diseases that are to be de- 
veloped or curbed according as environment shall determine. 
But the foundation in both cases, the ground, both mental, 
moral and physical, is sowed down and harrowed in with the 
tainted heredity. The mother in both instances, as a rule, is 



70 HEREDITY. 

but an aimless puppet, who dances to the tune played by her 
male owner — a mere weak transmitter or adjunct of and for 
and to his scale of life. Therefore, to point to the fact that 
to change these classes of infants in the cradle is to exchange 
(by means of their environment only) their mature develop- 
ment, also, from that of a Wall Street magnate to a Sing Sing 
convict, tells nothing whatever against the power and force of 
heredity. It tells only what is always claimed for fortunate- 
or unfortunate environments, that — 

'It gilds the straitened forehead of the fool.' 
Or that— 

'Through tattered clothes small vices do appear, 
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all; plate sin with gold, 
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; 
Arm it with rags, a pigmy's straw doth pierce it.' " 

But what she with such pointed sarcasm has 
written of the highest and the lowest classes 
may to our shame possibly be said of the large 
majority of children born. 

Is the following language too severe? 

"In the conception of a new soul the mass of mankind ob- 
serve no law, unless it be the law of chance. Out of the licen- 
tious or incontinent actions of a| husband's nature, conception,, 
after a time, is discovered to have taken place. No prepara- 
tion of body, mind or soul by either parent; simply an acciden- 
tal infusion of the man's hugely abnormal existence into the 
unimpregnated germ of the mother. And undesired by the 
father, as interfering with his incontinent nature, and dreaded 
and hated by the mother, a new soul is born into the world, 
* * * a soul having for its inheritance all the essential 
qualities necessary for a puny, brief and unsuccessful exist- 
ence. 

"And such a formidable array of wrong does this chance 
mode of creating new beings produce, that it might well have 
caused angels to weep. * * * Witness the thousands of 
the lame, and halt, and blind, the deaf and dumb, the de- 
formed, the idiotic, the diseased, the drunkards, the gluttons,. 



HEREDITY. 71 

the debased, that suffer the righteous penalty of a broken 
sexual law, and that mar the fair surface of this beautiful- 
earth." "Signs of a New Life," by John Cowan, M.D., pp. 
138-139. 

"The unrestrained indulgence of many a Christian pair, just 
because legally married, and tnerefore 'the bed undented/ 
must have its 'tale' of fruit in bringing into the world children- 
handicapped for life by appetites that are constantly burnings 
and insatiable, and that only the grace of God, and His keepings 
power can protect and save." "Anonymous." 

"Many a father and mother transmitted to their 'fallen^ 
daughter the weakness and the tendency to commit the acts 
which they and their fellows whine about afterward as 'tar- 
nishing the family honor.' If they had tied her hand and foot 
and cast her into the midst of the waves of the sea expecting^ 
her to save herself, they would be no more truly responsible 
for her death, be it moral or physical." "Arena," July, 1894, 
p. 149. 

Are these statements caricatures? A foul 
libel upon the great mass of Christian fami- 
lies? Or are they true? If true, or anywhere 
near the truth, then frankly, how could a child 
be brought into existence with larger lust as 
its inheritance than the average child in a 
Christian home? If true, or anywhere near 
the truth, then certainly it is an unwarranted 
conceit that leads any of us and the best of us 
to glory in our blood, or in the purity of our 
antecedents. 

There are some noble exceptions; and it is 
believed that the exceptions are increasing. 
That was a brave mother, who during the 
excruciating pains of childbirth was engaged 
in prayer. Her attending physician said 



72 HEREDITY. 

hers was the first case he had ever met; 
the majority, he said, were "more apt to swear 
than to pray." But that brave mother had 
been praying instead of swearing during all 
the previous months; and so had father and 
mother for weeks before conception occurred. 
And hence all the bitterness had been sancti- 
fied, and the cup she was drinking was made a 
cup of blessing. Happy, thrice happy, the 
child with such a parentage! A crown of 
glory will he place upon their heads and a dia- 
dem of beauty will he weave for their brows 
all through the coming ages. 

But, alas, alas! that such cases are the rare 
exception! The most of us will gladly draw 
.■a veil over our own origin as well as the origin 
of our children; and praise the grace and the 
love that could pluck such a brand from such a 
tire, and draw out from such a pit so wonder- 
ful a soul! 

But seeing is believing. I ask the reader's 
attention to the group of little children found 
on the next page, all of whom have been 
placed by a Children's Home Society in good 
Christian homes. The most of us take a deal 
of "stock" in our own knowledge of human 
nature. I would be greatly pleased to see my 
readers pick out from this group the children 
of bad heredities or unfortunate antecedents. 
The results would probably be amusing at 
least, if not an "eye-opener," and very likely 
upset many of your theories of heredity. 



74 HEREDITY. 

We have had so many applicants for chil- 
dren insist upon children of good antecedents^ 
and then be the first ones to go wild over a lit- 
tle girl or boy, because they at once discover 
so much of beauty, grace, affection, gentleness, 
and apparent nobility of soul revealed in the 
features! They do not stop a moment to 
worry over, or even inquire about the child's 
unfortunate antecedents ! Eye-sight versus 
theory; and the eye-sight wins ten to one! 

Five years ago a small baby boy was left 

with a poor woman in the city of , N. J., 

to be boarded. The amount per week was 
agreed upon, and two or three weeks' board 
paid in advance. The party never appeared 
again, and the good woman found herself in 
possession of an abandoned baby without a 
name (only "Freddie"). She was too poor to 
keep the child, yet had to do so for 18 months, 
and then turned him over to a Society that 
cared for him until five years old. I happened 
in the office of the Superintendent of this So- 
ciety one day just as he had received word 
from the family who had taken Freddie six 
months before saying in substance: "Foster 
mother sick, father lost his place; can't keep 
Freddie any longer." The Superintendent 
said to me: "I'll give Freddie to you, if you'll 
take him." As soon as I had seen the boy I 
said : "Yes, I'll take my chances on such a face 
and head-piece as that." Freddie was very 
soon placed in the family of a minister of the 
gospel, who has already asked for his adoption 
papers; and recently wrote thus: 



HEREDITY. 75 

"Freddie is a lovely boy. We think a great deal of him. 
TTp is in our estimation a handsome bit of boyhood; full of 
life and mischievous, of course, but free, we think, from all 
bad traits. It was a mercy he was rescued. He is doing well 
in a Methodist preacher's home, and nothing would please 
your humble servant more than to have him grow up to be also 
<a preacher of the gospel." 




Freddie. 



I think the majority of my readers will agree 
with my almost instantaneous conclusion, 
after seeing him: "I'll take my chances on such 
a face as that." Nor would you stop to inquire 
very particularly about his antecedents. Our 
notions of heredity all go to the winds in the 
presence of such a face. 

If I should ask each of my readers to select 
from all these faces the boy or girl whom you 
would prefer to take to your heart and home 
as your own child, the chances are probably 
two to one that you would select a child with 
"unfortunate antecedents." And nine out of 
i:en would sooner trust his own eyes and his 
own judgment of faces than any facts we 



t i 






■ 




HEREDITY. 77 

might be able to give as to the antecedents of 
the child. 

During the three years past we have taken. 
18 children from one of the county almshouses 
of this State, and I have often said in public 
addresses that I would very freely place those 
18 children alongside of any 18 children of the 
same age that could be gathered from 18 aver- 
age families on " Center Avenue" or from any 
street representing the best "blood" of the 
country. And if those 18 almshouse children 
were cleaned up and dressed as nicely as the 
Center Avenue children, three out of five 
strangers would probably choose them first. 
With two or three exceptions, I have seldom 
seen a finer looking or brighter appearing com- 
pany of children. 




George W. Childs. 

And just here may be a good place to repeat 



78 HEREDITY. 

a fact already hinted at, that very many of 
these children with so-called "unfortunate 
antecedents" may have some of the best blood 
of the country in their veins. Look at Freddie's 
face. There is certainly nobility there, royal 
blood from some source. Look again at the 
face of ex-Governor Burke and Governor 
Brady (p. 36). Look at the face of the late 
George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, one of the 
noblest philanthropists and most successful 
men of the present age. Look at the faces on 
the two following pages. 

The antecedents of all these are involved in 
obscurity; but it does not take the eye of a 
"seer" to detect the very plain evidences of no- 
ble blood from some source. And yet we 
brand all these as of "unfortunate antece- 
dents" simply because their antecedents are 
unknown. In the same way we brand the 
children of that man in the gutter, or that 
prisoner behind the "grates" as of "unfortu- 
nate antecedents," although in very many 
cases some of the best blood in the country 
may flow in their veins. 

As a matter of fact, this word "unfortunate 
antecedents" is itself an "unfortunate" word; 
it is decidedly nebulous, chameleon-like, un- 
certain; you cannot easily define it, and if you 
attempt a definition, your definition will mean 
one thing to me and quite another thing to you. 

To one the word suggests simply poverty. 
If the parents are very poor, the children are 
unfortunate in their antecedents; but if the 



HEREDITY. 



79 



parents are rich and aristocratic, the antece- 
dents of the children are good, no matter how 
rotten the character of the parent or how sel- 
fish and depraved the life! 




To another the word unfortunate antece- 
dents recalls a drunkard in the gutter. Poor, 
unfortunate child! his father has fallen into 
the gutter! But that other child over the way 
has a father who drinks a great deal more 

6 



80 



HEREDITY. 



than that poor man in the gutter; he is liter- 
ally soaked with alcoholic stimulants from one 
year's end to the other, but manages to stand 
up without staggering, and conduct a success- 




ful business, and acquire wealth; and so his 
children are of "good antecedents!" 

To still another the word "unfortunate an- 
tecedents" points to a criminal behind the 
"bars." This may have been his first crime, 
and some of the best blood of the country majr 



HEREDITY. 81 

flow in his veins; no matter, he is a criminal, 
and has been caught at it; and his children 
must wear the criminal's brand "unfortunate 
antecedents!" But that other man who is 
spending his life in robbing and plundering 
his fellowmen, grinding the faces of the poor, 
because he does it by the wholesale and keeps 
out of the clutches of the law, is all right; his 
"blood" is good, and his children have very 
"fortunate -antecedents!" 

To yet another one this term "unfortunate 
antecedents" is applied almost exclusively to 
an "illegitimate" child. His antecedents are 
certainly "unfortunate." Of course they are; 
there is and can be no difference of opinion 
upon this point; and yet both the parents of 
this unfortunate child may be from the best 
of families; and this their first offence — an 
offence, too, that has been bitterly regretted, 
and a thousand times repented of, until their 
repentance has stamped itself upon the very 
face and the character of the child*; while that 
other child, because born in lawful wedlock, 
has the very best of antecedents, though its 

*I think I am justified, at this point, in letting my readers* 
Into a little secret. You will find about fifty faces of children, all 
told, in this booklet: and while I do not feel at liberty to iden- 
tify them with exactness by saying, "this one and this one are 
illegitimate," yet for the sake of pointing the immensely im- 
portant statement made above, I do feel justified in stating the 
fact that of the fifty children whose pictures are given over 
one-half— nearly two-thirds— are "illegitimate." I will go a step 
farther and say that if you choose to go over the entire list and 
select all those children who have an unusual large development of 
the moral organs— as the phrenologist locates them, that is, the 
central and highest group— the middle top of the head— four- 
fifths of those thus selected would probably be "illegitimate"* 
children, revealing thus the moral struggles of the mother dur- 
ing the prenatal period. 



■82 HEREDITY. 

parents have worn themselves out in self- 
indulgence, because legally married and the 
"bed undefiled," and have crowded into this 
<child as much of the sexual passion as it is pos- 
sible to crowd into a human soul! 

Surely this phrase "unfortunate antece- 
dents'' is a perplexing one. But in all candor 
we ask which of the above children should 
wear the brand "unfortunate antecedents/' 
and which wmild probably be the safest child 
to receive into your home? 

Before closing this chapter, I desire to add a 
thought that possibly would more appro- 
priately have found a place at the close of the 
previous section on the prenatal influence of 
~the mother. But I insert it here because it 
rseems a fitting finale to this chapter. I refer 
to the fearful responsibility of the father in the 
heredities of the future child. In the first place 
the father has much to do with the conditions, 
favorable or unfavorable, that surround the 
mother during the prenatal period; it is his, 
very largely, to make her life a pleasant or un- 
pleasant one — to control those influences and 
environments that control her; he is the model, 
the "statuette," as it were, before whom she 
continually sits. 

But all these are indirect influences, affect- 
ing the child through the mother. The father's 
direct contribution to the child's heredities is 
confined to his condition, mentally, physically, 
and morally at the time of conception. He has 
had days and weeks and years before to fit him- 



HEREDITY. 83 

self for the fearful responsibility; to fit him- 
self, or unfit himself; for he may be at his 
best or he may be at his worst. He may 
be under the influence of liquor, or he may 
be under the holy influences of the Divine 
Spirit. He may be rested and strong physi- 
cally, or overworked, worn out, nervous, 
weak; he may be intellectually at his best, 
or overburdened and exhausted, mentally 
almost a nonentity, an imbecile. Multitudes 
of children are the sad evidences of utter reck- 
lessness on the part of the father. Some of 
the finest minds of the world have begotten 
children that were as dull and deficient in men- 
tal calibre as if the parents had been intel- 
lectual dotards; and the only rational explana- 
tion is the monster crime of the father in per- 
mitting himself to become a father when so 
illy fitted to assume that solemn relationship. 
How else, for instance, can we account for 
the statements as to the heredities of the great 
men of England as given by Mr. Galton (p. 26). 
For if genius and great talents are really here- 
ditary, as popularly understood, then all the 
children of great men and great women ought 
to be great like their parents; but if all these 
law^s may be modified by the conditions of the 
father at the hour of conception, and of the 
mother during the nine months before the 
child is born, then we can easily understand 
how one child may become the equal, or even 
excel his father, and the next one be as dull 
and unintellectual as the average mass. 



84 HEREDITY. 

And we may possibly be able in the same 
way to account for some of the great geniuses, 
the mighty intellects that have sprung from the 
common herd. For the dullest minds and the 
commonest intellects sometimes wake up and 
have their hours and days of wondrous activi- 
ties, when the imagination dreams of glorious 
achievements, or the moral or spiritual life is 
quickened into intense longings for noble 
achievements, or self-denying efforts. To be- 
come a parent under such auspicious circum- 
stances would seem to bequeath to the child a 
degree of intellectual activity, and of spiritual 
aspiration altogether beyond the general aver- 
age of the parents' acquirements. 

The same rule would explain many of the 
moral contrasts frequently seen between a 
r good Christian father and a reprobate son. 
The father may be in the main a noble, kind- 
liearted, high-minded and true man; but under 
a long continued strain of trouble with a most 
troublesome neighbor, it may be, or a weari- 
some law suit, or a neighborhood quarrel, or 
an exciting political campaign wherein bitter 
animosities have been engendered, this good 
man may have lost his balance and become for 
the time being almost an untamed and un- 
chained tiger, insane and blinded by passion. 
To become a father under such unnatural con- 
ditions is little else than a crime against na- 
ture, since it is likely to fasten upon that child 
a legacy of uncontrolled passion as contrasted 



HEREDITY. 85 

with his father's usual sweetness and nobility 
of nature. 

Sometimes, however, the contrast between 
lather and child has another cause. One of 
the noblest, sweetest tempered and most thor- 
oughly consecrated ministers of the gospel in 
this State has a son who is a thoroughly bad 
boy, a real reprobate; and the good man when 
asked how it was possible for such an earnest 
Christian man to be the father of such a son, 
replied: "Before I was converted I was as bad 
as they make them; was called the young devil, 
and accounted the worst boy and young man in 
the neighborhood; my boy does not inherit his 
father's renewed, regenerated nature, but the 
'old Adam.' " So that the boy's deviltry was, 
after all, a case of real heredity; and only em- 
phasizes still more emphatically the obligation 
of the father not to allow himself to become a 
father while under the control of the "old 
Adam," especially if that is destructive and 
pernicious; but seek by the most careful prepa- 
ration, through prayer and fasting, the com- 
plete control of the Divine Spirit. The Apos- 
tle Paul says — 

"Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, 
do all to the glory of God." 

That Christian who has reached so high a 
plain that he can eat and drink to the glory of 
God, ought certainly in this, the supreme 
hour of his life, when a new soul is to be 
launched into being, with unspeakable possi- 



86 



HEREDITY. 



bilities before it, an eternity of the grandest 
existence in the universe of God — surely at 
such an hour that father needs all the grace 
and all the Divine help, all the consecration 
and all the preparation that is possible for him 
to make or receive. And really what crime on 
earth can be greater, unless it be the crime of 
murder, than to become a father as a mere ac- 
cident of lust! Launch a soul into an unend- 
ing existence for a moment's indulgence! 
Careless, reckless, criminal such a father! 





CHfiPTEH IV. 

UT we are not yet through with this 
interesting discussion. In the "New 
World" for December, 1894, there is 
an article entitled "The Mimicry of Heredity/' 
by George Batchelor, which contains sugges- 
tions of very great importance to a clear under- 
standing of our subject. He says that the 
word "heredity" should be "limited to indicate 
that which flows in the blood, that which i& 
contained in the constitution of the child at the 
moment of birth;" while the term "environ- 
ment" is regarded as "that which is outside of 
a man, which remains outside of him, and 
which is always the subject of action and re- 
action." But between these two, the heredity 
that is found in the blood at birth, and the en- 
vironment which remains outside, Mr. Batche- 
lor describes a "third something" more potent 
and powerful in determining what shall be the 
future character of the child than either the 
direct heredity or the environment : and to this 
"third something" he gives the name "Mimic 
Heredity." 

"A child is born with organs, aptitudes, powers, possibilities, 
appetites, desires, impulses and (probably) with a few in- 
stincts. But it is born without ideas, knowledge, habits or 
moral character. These furnishings of the mind, however, 
are at hand, waiting to press into the new-born child, and to 
become a part of him. Once inside, they are no longer a part 
of his environment, and are commonly supposed to have been, 
born in him. ,, "New World," December, 1894. 



-88 HEREDITY. 

There is much in this statement. We are 
constantly charging to heredity follies and 
sins that are clearly the outgrowth of environ- - 
ment. A plump, healthy baby is born into the 
world weighing nine pounds. At ten years of 
age, if the food and the surroundings have 
been healthful and plentiful, that helpless 
baby has developed into a strong, robust, ac- 
tive, bright boy weighing 89 pounds. Eighty 
pounds of real boy have been added to this nine 
pound baby, not one ounce of which can be 
credited to his heredity. He inherited nine 
pounds, 80 pounds have been added since, and 
have come to him as the result of the air he has 
breathed, the food he has eaten and digested 
and the exercise he has taken. These 80 
added pounds, however, are not air or food or 
exercise; they are real boy, as perfectly and 
completely so as was that first nine pounds. 

But what a difference between the infant of 
one day and the boy of ten years! The one as 
perfectly formed and as completely a boy as 
the other, but perfectly helpless, perfectly 
ignorant, perfectly characterless. Every fac- 
ulty and passion and attribute of body, soul 
and spirit, completely formed, but empty, abso- 
lutely empty, without a particle of develop- 
ment in any direction, with no power of self- 
perpetuation; a helpless little mass of human- 
ity that can survive only by outside help. 

But here, on the other hand, is a boy of ten 
years with strong muscles, strong will power, 
self-centered, independent, with a character 



HEREDITY. 89 

already forming, an intellect that has ex- 
panded in a wonderful way in a hundred direc- 
tions, and has gathered up ideas and impres- 
sions and memories from a thousand sources. 
A boy able to think, and act, and care for him- 
self in large measure. 

Now all this almost immeasurable differ- 
ence between the boy of one day and the boy of 
ten years has been brought about by the con- 
stant accretions from the outside; none of this 
addition has been inherited; it represents the 
-"mimic heredity" of Mr. Batchelor, not his real 
actual heredity nor his environment. It is a 
product of the two combined; and differs in 
almost every essential from either. 

Evidently, however, there are some things 
about that boy of ten years, properly classed in 
this product, this mimic heredity, that are pop- 
ularly supposed to be inherited. As for in- 
stance, his character, his moral character, his 
^disposition, his mental quickness or dullness, 
his strong, robust frame, his temperament, 
whether muscular, or phlegmatic, or nervous, 
or mental; his passions, love of money, love of 
home, hate, &c. ; his impulsive nature, his quick 
temper, or his long-suffering patience, kind- 
ness, gentleness, tenderness, or cruelty. All 
these elements that at ten years of age are so 
plainly manifest, and so strongly developed, 
are supposed to be inherited. But are they? 
A weak, feeble beginning, a seed, a tendency 
was inherited and that was all. But every 
natural tendency, every seed germ would long 



90 HEREDITY. 

ago have lost its vitality and been buried out 
of sight but for the stimulus, the food brought 
from without and absorbed by that growing 
boy. 

Suppose, then, for the sake of the argument, 
that this baby boy of nine pounds does inherit 
from its parents a strong appetite for the in- 
toxicating cup, for instance, or a thieving pro- 
pensity, or a large inheritance of pride, or a 
quarrelsome, fighting disposition; if these bad 
heredities find no food upon which to feed and 
are left to starve, where will they be at the end 
of ten years? 

On the contrary, if that baby boy remains 
with his parents, or is surrounded by such ele- 
ments as will call forth into ad ion and develop 
all these baser and lower heredities, by the 
time he is ten years old these evil appetites will 
have acquired such strength and power as to 
be difficult of control; and the < Mirist ian family 
of refinement and culture who take thai boy 
into their home and their family life will very 
likely discover that they have no small task- 
before them. And if they fail, the whole com- 
munity will probably say: "I told you so. I 
knew that boy's parents too well to hope for 
anything better; a chip from the old block." 
But it was not really because he was a chip 
from the old block. Only one-tenth of that 
boy is a chip from the old block; nine-tenths of 
him has been poured into him since he was 
born; and it has unfortunately happened that 
the material that has been poured into hint 



HEREDITY. 91 

during these ten years lias been of such a na- 
ture as to call into activity and life the pecu- 
liarities which be inherited from his parents. 
Had he been placed from his birth in an en- 
tirely different atmosphere, with different sur- 
roundings, and different influences, we should 
probably never afterwards have heard about 

"a chip from the old block." 

Pardon me for repeating in this connection 
the very clear statement of Mr. I \ Loring Brace 
(Chapter 2d, p. 43): 

"I believe that the tendency to ridoi 1st Ko the 

child, but very often it is dormant; the child is not yet old 
enough to allow it to hare been developed. I believe if such 
A boj were to continue to live in the same environment to 
which he had been accustomed from birth, associating with 
children of his class, many of whom might be worse than 
himself, I believe that under those circumstances the heredi- 
tary taint would, in course of time, show itself. But we get 
such boys when they are young; we transplant them to a 
wholesome farm life, where they soon learn something of the 
amenities of the family and domestic existence. If they had 
this dormant, hereditary tendency, it is soon eradicated under 
the new and wholesome conditions in which they are placed." 

"In the philosophic sense, a prince inherits from his royal 
father only what runs in the blood — only that which would 
come out in the character if the prince were at birth removed 
from every kind of association with the royal line of his an- 
cestry. In the ordinary course of events, however, the prince 
inherits, that is, is popularly supposed to inherit, the titles, 
estates, heirlooms, customs, modes of thought, estimates of 
himself and his fellow men. education, national idiosyn- 
crasies, standards of morality, personal habits and social 
regulations which are current in his family. 

"In the philosophic sense, however, none of these things are 
.hereditary. * * * There is a popular notion that an Egyp- 



92 HEREDITY. 

tian by birth must of necessity have Egyptian ideas, a China- 
man Chinese ideas, and an Englishman English ideas. Until 
we get entirely rid of this notion, no scientific account of here- 
dity can be given. * * * Put a Chinese baby into an Eng- 
lish cradle, let him never speak anything but English, and 
above all, never be reminded of his foreign ancestry, and the 
traditions of 3000 years will fall away, and for him will be as 
if they had never been. No Japanese mother kisses or cuddles 
her baby, but a Japanese baby in an American home takes ta 
kissing and cuddling as if to the manner born. No Oriental 
man or woman brought up in the East can understand our 
Western customs of courtship, marriage and the treatment of 
women. But Asiatics transported to our shores in infancy 
take to romantic views of women and marriage without a 
shudder. There is no proof ^ that any change has been made in 
the mental or moral constitution of mankind since the earliest 
historic records and monuments were made. There is no 
proof that a child taken out of the most ancient family of any 
race, civilized or uncivilized, would not adopt all the most 
modern habits and notions of any existing race of a similar 
temperament." George Batchelor, in "The Mimicry of 
Heredity." 

This is a most important consideration in 
the present discussion. It is very evident that 
a great deal usually charged to heredity be- 
longs to this "mimic heredity ." For instance, 
one author, among numerous instances of sup- 
posed heredities, mentions the following: 

"Immunity from diseases, contagious or otherwise, muscu- 
lar strength, swiftness of foot, grace in dancing, skill in playing- 
Instruments and in acrobatic performances, are transmissible 
qualities." 

But is this statement scientifically correct? 
Is it certain that this child takes so naturally 



HEREDITY. 93- 

and easily to dancing, or becomes a successful 
athlete because it was in his blood, born in 
him? or was it because of the contagion of ex- 
ample? Every child has a strong natural in- 
stinct to imitate. The father is running, or he 
is dancing, or practicing his athletic sports in 
the presence of the child, and the child is con- 
stantly seeking to imitate the father. His 
daily exercise naturally and easily falls into 
the line of his father's or his mother's activi- 
ties, and so he becomes an athlete or a dancer 
by the contagion of constant example, and by 
his own constant exercise in that direction. 
Had the child from birth been reared in a 
family of slow pokes, in hard plodding drudg- 
ery, would he have become an athlete? There 
may have been in his blood a strong inclination 
in that direction only waiting an opportunity 
to assert itself; and he could have become an 
athlete far more readily than a drudge, but the 
lack of opportunity, and the constant absorp- 
tion of all the energies of body and mind in the 
drudgery of other occupations, will gradually 
weaken and finally bury out of sight these in- 
born inclinations. 

Are we quite sure that large family of sing- 
ers, consisting of "six sons and three daugh- 
ters," (p. 25) inherited their fine musical talent 
direct from their parents, both of whom "were 
excellent singers, and the father for many 
years a teacher of vocal music?" or did it come 
from this "mimic heredity," the contagion of 
constant example, the musical atmosphere 



94 HEREDITY. 

that surounded them during all their earliest 
years? 

Are we quite sure that child died of con- 
sumption because it inherited the seeds of con- 
sumption from father or mother? Or did the 
child acquire this disease after it was born by 
constantly breathing the tainted atmosphere, 
and by losing the benefit of the vigorous, 
health-giving and strength-producing exercise 
that would have been its atmosphere and be- 
come its habit if the parents had been robust 
and vigorous and active? I believe the latest 
decision of scientific research is that consump- 
tion is contagious and not hereditary. It is 
hereditary only in the fact that a consumptive 
parent will probably bequeath to the child 
weak lungs, not diseased lungs, simply weak, 
small in capacity, and therefore will require 
greater care all through life, in warding off 
lung-breeding diseases. 

"Suppose that you are born from a family which has for its 
heritage a history of many and early deaths from consump- 
tion. Suppose that you have discovered that the tendency is 
strong within yourself. Is it for that reason .absolutely neces- 
sary that you buy a coffin-plate to-morrow and proceed to die 
with lung trouble? By no means. Knowing your inherited 
weakness you guard with jealous care the health you have, 
and it may be that your intelligent consideration may secure 
to you, in spite of your undoubted inheritance, the three score 
years and ten; while your robust neighbor, with lungs like a 
bellows and the inheritance from a race of athletes, may suc- 
cumb to the March winds which he braved and you did not. 
Maybe 'quick consumption' will carry him off while you re- 
main to mourn his loss. 

"I know a man in New York city who had what is called a 



HEREDITY. 95 

^family history' of consumption, who was rejected on that 
ground by every life insurance company in this country 30 
Tears ago. Well, that frightened him within an inch of his 
life; but with that inch he set to work to build his house 
"facing the other way,' as he expressed it to me when I met 
him ten years ago, when he was, as he still is, a hale, hearty 
old gentleman." Helen Gardner in "Arena," July, 1894. 

This is evidently the proper solution of the 
supposed cases of hereditary deafness from 
Martha's Vineyard (see Chapter 1, p. 18). The 
statement carefully considered is its own suffi- 
cient answer. The physician says: "To-day 
one in every 25 persons is deaf. * * * In 
one central branch deafness has occurred and 
disappeared and recurred with curious atavis- 
tic perseverance." 

Now if deafness were really hereditary, it 
should be the rule rather than the exception; 
the majority of the children born of deaf-mutes 
ought to be deaf, and ought to be born deaf. 
Whereas in an article in the Encyclopedia 
Brittanica the statement is made that where 
faoth parents are deaf only one in ten of the 
.-children are deaf, and are not born deaf. As a 
matter of fact, we learn from the same excel- 
lent authority that a larger per cent, of deaf 
and dumb children come from the marriage of 
own cousins (though the cousins may be in per- 
fect health and without a physical defect) than 
come from the marriage of deaf-mutes to- 
gether, showing that some other than the law 
of heredity must be invoked to explain the 
facts. 

7 



96 HEREDITY. 

Is there not a more rational method of ac- 
counting for the facts? 

If both parents are deaf their organs of hear- 
ing are not used; and it is a law of our being 
that vigorous exercise is essential to health 
and growth. An unused organ becomes 
weak; this weakness is transmitted to the off- 
spring. But there remain the two suggestive 
facts: a. That the children of deaf persons are 
not born deaf; they seem to inherit the organs 
of hearing perfectly constructed and of such 
ability to perform all their natural functions 
through life that nine out of ten succeed; and 
yet, 6. Evidently not quite up to the normal 
condition as to health and strength, since one 
in ten fails. 

Precisely the same conclusions must be 
reached regarding the cases mentioned of sup- 
posed hereditary blindness. Blind persons do 
not beget blind children; they beget children 
with weakened functions in the organs of vis- 
ion, which sometimes result in blindness, but 
with special care do not so result. 

And the same conclusions must be reached 
as to mental and moral heredities. Did the 
children of the Juke family become prostitutes 
and paupers and criminals because they in- 
herited tendencies in that direction? Was it 
not rather because as soon as they were born, 
they began to breathe an atmosphere tainted 
with all this pollution and depravity? The 
positive answer would seem to be found in the 
facts so clearly stated by Mr. Dugdale, that 



HEREDITY. 97 

whenever branches of the Juke's family were 
taken outside of the contagion of prostitutes 
and paupers and criminals, they became re- 
spectable people. 

And the same remarks would apply to the 
"Chretien" family. (P. 24.) 

Are not the following statements both rea- 
sonable and philosophical, that every child is 
born with a complete set of faculties, appetites 
and passions; and all possess precisely the 
same; the child of the best Christian parent 
has not a faculty or appetite that the child 
from the slums does not share; nor does the 
child of the most degraded criminal possess a 
single unfortunate passion or appetite that is 
not the inheritance of the best born child on 
earth. And all these appetites and passions 
are without a particle of development in any 
direction at birth; but each one of them has- 
an open mouth, ready to take in anything and 
everything that comes in its way promising 
food for its special craving. 

We may probably imagine some of these un- 
developed but hungry mouths to have received 
from a tainted parentage perverted cravings 
that will more readily absorb unhealthy and 
poisonous food than food of purer quality. 
Nevertheless it remains true that if the kind 
of food they crave most is denied them abso- 
lutely and persistently, these perverted tastes, 
however strong, must starve out and become 
gradually weaker until they lose their power 
to harm. On the other hand, the child of the 



$8 HEREDITY. 

best parents on earth, has, as his heredity, 
every appetite and passion belonging to the 
lowest and vilest; and all these baser passions 
bave open mouths, too, clamoring for food, and 
need only to be placed in congenial environ- 
ments to develop all that is basest and vilest in 
our fallen nature. 

In the case of that good Baptist deacon 200 
years ago, whose decendants during six gener- 
ations have been almost universally Christian 
people, many of them deacons, Sunday-school 
workers, several of them ministers of the gos- 
pel, &c, was all this the result of blood, of in- 
herited tastes and proclivities toward religion, 
or was it chiefly, if not entirely, the outcome of 
contagion, of breathing a Christian atmos- 
phere from birth, a noble Christian character 
daily exhibited, Christian sentiments con- 
stantly inhaled, a family altar never set aside, 
Uible truth not only earnestly and faithfully 
presented from the pulpit, but read daily at 
the family altar, and lived in the daily life? 
In the next Booklet, No. 3, we shall find that 
Bible truth constantly and judiciously pre- 
sented before the mind of a child has irresisti- 
ble power; it proves itself to be living seed 
which when sown in a young heart is sure to 
grow and produce a new life there. 

There are sufficient ways to account for all 
the good results in that remarkable family for 
six generations without the necessity of falling 
back upon their heredity, or of imagining con- 
ditions that are contrary to fact, and contrary 



HEREDITY. 99> 

to the explicit testimony of the Word of God. 
Every one of those fortunate children inher- 
ited so many evil tendencies that he would 
have gone to the bad as certainly and almost as- 
swiftly as any child from the slums had he 
been placed in the same environments of evil. 
The Psalmist David was a very good man in 
the main, and had a splendid family inheri- 
tance, was a great-grandson of Boaz and Kuth, 
and a son of Jesse. And yet he said of him- 
self, by the Spirit of God, "Behold, I was 
shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother 
conceive me." His very large family of chil- 
dren seem nearly all to have gone to the bad, 
except Solomon. And even Solomon, with all 
his wisdom and the unusual religious atmos- 
phere that surrounded him in the first years of 
his reign, finally degenerated and fell; and 
why? Was it chiefly because of hereditary 
weaknesses? Was it not rather because these 
hereditary weaknesses were kindled inta 
a flame until beyond his control by the un- 
fortunate environments he had gathered 
about him in later years? During all 
his earlier years, when the natural pas- 
sions are most aggressive, and inherited 
tendencies have the most power, the religious 
atmosphere that surrounded him, the godly 
teachings of his father, and the constant 
help of God which he was continually in- 
voking, were abundantly sufficient to cope 
with and hold in restraint all the inherited 
evils or weaknesses of his nature, though at 



100 HEREDITY. 

their best. But when he allowed himself to be 
captured by his numerous wives, and turned 
his back upon God and placed himself outside 
of the religious atmosphere of his younger 
days, then he became weak like other men — a 
Sampson shorn of his locks, a David without 
a sling, and without faith in God, attempting to 
meet a Goliath. 

I mean to say that the remarkable results in 
that Puritan family through six generations 
must be charged to prayer and the power of 
Bible truth and of regenerating grace, to 
Christian environments rather than to blood, 
and therefore conclude that it is this "mimic 
heredity/' the atmosphere into which a child 
is placed at birth and which surrounds him 
during his developing childhood, that decides 
his character, rather than the capital, the 
capacities or tastes that he inherits from his 
parents. 

And with this agrees our constant experi- 
ence in the placing of children in families. It 
is not the small children, the babes or children 
of tender years that make us trouble; it is the 
Tare exception to have any trouble with these, 
and it matters little what their heredities may 
"have been. But the children who make us 
trouble are the larger children from eight to 
twelve and fourteen years — children' whose 
previous environments have developed the 
mischievous and unfortunate traits that have 
l>een bequeathed them by their parents. 

My reader, however, will very likely be 



HEREDITY. 101 

ready with a multitude of instances that have 
come under his own observation directly con- 
tradicting this statement — instances of very 
young children taken into the best of homes, 
w T ho have nevertheless afterwards developed 
hereditary traits utterly foreign to the pure 
atmosphere that has surrounded them; and 
the foster parents have found to their great 
sorrow that they had only been thawing out a 
viper, bringing warmth and life to a poisonous 
serpent. Such instances are not rare, and 
might perhaps be rationally explained; but 
our sufficient answer is, that such unfortunate 
lapses quite as frequently occur right in one's 
own family. The following incident, clipped 
from a daily paper, could probably be easily 
duplicated a thousand times over in almost 
every portion of our country: 

"Two boys in Boston, aged respectively 18 and 20 years, 
have in a few months attained a distinction in criminal annals 
seldom achieved by ordinary criminals in the course of a life- 
time. Since last September 53 incendiary fires have occurred 
in Cambridge and Somerville. suburbs of Boston, the aggre- 
gate loss occasioned thereby being more than a million of dol- 
lars. This week a box factory was burned., causing a loss of 
$75,000. The boys were seen by a little girl, who gave so 
accurate a description of them that their arrest was made 
easy. They confessed to the whole business, and one of them, 
in addition, confessed to setting fire to a lumber yard two 
years ago which caused the loss of a million of dollars. Both 
boys, it is said, belong to respectable families." 

My own judgment and observation is that 
the most difficult child to manage is usually 
our own child, and for the reason that it is our 



102 HEREDITY. 

own child, too much like ourselves, a "chip 
from the old block." I will probably be 
warmly disputed in the following statement, 
nevertheless it is true: that each one of us know 
more about our neighbors around us, their real 
character, than we know about ourselves. 
We are grievously humbugged about our own 
character and value; are absolutely blinded 
and deceived; our estimates of ourselves are 
usually false to the core; we can form a much 
better and safer judgment of the real charac- 
ter and worth of our neighbor than of our own. 
Hence the statement made above, that our 
own children are our greatest puzzles; we can 
discover the real situation and learn how to 
control other people's children sooner than our 
own. And therefore the percentage of abso- 
lute failures in the training of children is less 
with foster parents than with real parents. 

But there are other and simpler reasons for 
this strange fact. 

A Sound Mind in a Sound Body 

is an old proverb most thoroughly attested. 
In fact, that both the intellectual and the 
moral natures are greatly influenced and 
helped by a robust, healthy body, no one can 
question. Nor will any careful observer ques- 
tion that in this regard the child of poverty,- 
the child even from the slums, and especially 
the large majority of illegitimate children, 
have the advantage over the average child 



HEREDITY. 103 

from the higher walks of life. I mean to state 
positively that the children we, as a Society, are 
called upon to place in homes are better born, 
physically, than the average child in the upper 
classes. A child born in a home of opulence is 
quite apt to inherit physical weaknesses. 
Both father and mother have their time occu- 
pied in mental pursuits, brain work that gives 
little time for real vigorous physical exercise. 
Eesult, children inherit more brain than 
brawn, feeble bodies, overactive minds, with 
nervous temperaments. Then such children 
are very apt to be pampered and petted and 
spoiled by over-indulgence; not obliged to 
work hard with their hands, they do not be- 
come strong of muscle; not obliged to be under 
severe restraints, their moral fibre fails to be- 
come firm; the result is, while often brilliant 
for a time such children fail in the final race 
of life, both mentally and morally. 

There is no question whatever that nearly 
all the leading men of our country, the most 
active and successful business men, the most 
successful preachers, lawyers, legislators, &c, 
were raised on farms, or came from the hum- 
bler walks of life. And these same successful 
men may have given no special promise when 
they were boys; quite likely were dull stu- 
dents, seemed thick-headed and slow as com- 
pared with the quick-witted, wide-awake, ner- 
vous and conceited city boy of wealthy parent- 
age. But for some reason the career of this 
brilliant specimen is brief; he loses his health,. 



104 HEREDITY. 

becomes more nervous and uncertain; possibly 
falls into unfortunate habits that sap his vital- 
ity or lessen his ambition; from one cause or 
another he gradually drops out of the race. 

While the country boy or the son of that 
hod-carrier, with unbounded physical energy 
and vim, begins gradually to wake up, ambi- 
tion kindles slowly, perhaps, but it kindles. 
He finds out that there is something in him, 
and having the physical strength and the will 
power to forge ahead, he drives faster and 
faster, until in the end he has distanced all his 
competitors and achieved success. This is the 
lesson of the past. 

But the children we handle are quite apt to 
bave another advantage over the child of opu- 
lence. They are better natured as a class, 
have better dispositions, and are therefore 
more easily managed. The child of opulence 
has a large inheritance of pride, of family con- 
ceit, which is easily developed into prominence 
by the child's environments. And if in addi- 
tion to this the child is over-indulged and 
petted, he is quite liable to become exacting 
and very selfish, if not cross-grained and petu- 
lent, and therefore a difficult child to manage. 

Whereas our children coming from the hum- 
bler walks of life are more apt to be tractable 
and teachable, are less conceited, more mod- 
est, not so exacting, contented with far less, 
more yielding and submissive, and hence far 
more easily managed. 

Putting all these facts together, one can 



HEREDITY. 105 

easily accept the statement I have made, that 
the percentage of absolute failures in the 
training of children is less with foster parents 
than with own parents. 

But there are still other reasons for this 
strange statement. We sometimes say play- 
fully that in our Society work we are able to 
"beat nature" in two or three directions. A 
bright little girl who had been adopted and 
was genuinely loved by a worthy pair was fre- 
quently taunted by her little playmates with 
such unpleasant flings as this: "Your papa and 
mama don't love you as much as our papas 
and mamas love us;" until one day a happy 
thought struck her and she retorted in a way 
that ever after spiked their guns: "No, no, my 
papa and mama love me more than your papa 
and mama love you, for my papa and mama 
took me because they loved me and your papa and 
mama took you because they couldnH help it" 

If what was said in chapter three about so 
many children born in Christian families 
being accidents of lust, and perhaps undesired 
until after they are born, is anywhere near the 
truth, then this bright little girl "hit the nail 
on the head" and must be called a philosopher. 
For while there may be a little sentiment in 
the notion that you can't love an adopted child 
just as you love your own flesh and blood, it is 
mere sentiment and thoroughly animal at 
that; there is no Christianity in it, no moral or 
spiritual element in it. The love that is 
founded upon flesh and blood is simply animal 



106 HEREDITY. 

instinct, precisely the same kind of affectiort 
the dumb brutes manifest. It is a higher and 
purer love that is based upon intellectual and 
moral values, loving your child for what you 
can see in its future, looking forward, rather 
than what you can discover by looking back- 
ward. This is the true love, the most God- 
like; in fact, this is divine love; and it is a love 
that can be depended on to take best care of 
the child. 

But still farther, there are two other advan- 
tages over nature in our methods, a. You 
have the privilege of taking the child on trial 
for several months, if desired, until you have 
full opportunity of finding out whether you are 
suited to each other, whether you can readily 
and naturally love the child and will be able to 
control it. Nature furnishes no such opportu- 
nity. The little ones are thrust upon us, good 
bad or indifferent, and we have no opportunity 
of selection or choice. 

6. But again, not only does the parent have 
the opportunity of a choice, but the child, 
through the agents of our Society, has an 
equal chance of selection, and does secure a far 
better parentage than the average child of na- 
ture. In the first place the families who se- 
cure children from us must all be Christian 
families, whereas the average family in our 
country is not a Christian family; that is to* 
say, there are more non-Christian than Chris- 
tion families in our country. Then our fami- 
lies have to be families of respectability and 



HEREDITY. 107 

good standing in the community, and of such 
financial circumstances as to give promise of 
good care and of ability to give the child a 
good education and fit it for the responsibili- 
ties of life. Whereas, probably the majority 
of all the children born in our country have at 
the best second or third-rate homes, very many 
of them homes of squalor and ignorance and 
vice, and the child has no choice as to his fu- 
ture home. 

There are then good and substantial reasons 
for the statement I have made, that our chil- 
dren as a rule, raised by foster parents, are 
more easily managed, more successfully 
trained, and furnish less real failures than the 
average child raised by its own parents. 

To recapitulate: Our children, as a rule have 
i:he advantage of the children born in the 
upper circles, the higher classes, in the fact 
lhat they inherit better physiques, are not so 
nervous, or weak in body; therefore begin life 
with a stronger foundation upon which to rear 
a substantial structure; then they have better 
dispositions, are not so conceited, or imperious 
in will, not so exacting, more easily satisfied, 
therefore more easily controlled. They have 
the advantage of the children born in the 
lower walks of life in the fact that they are 
wisely and carefully selected as to their adap- 
tations, the child to the parent and the parent 
to the child; they are blessed with a better 
„ class of parents, Christian parents, who, in 
i:heir selection of the child and in their future 



108 HEREDITY. 

training of the child, are expected to be under 
the inspiration and control of the highest mo- 
tives. And if in any of these directions a mis- 
take has been discovered, our system enables 
us to remedy the mistake by replacing the 
child. Nature has no such remedy for its mal- 
administrations; desertion or death is its only 
escape from blunders or mistakes! 

The ff Kiw Heredity'' or Regeneration. 

The new heredity or regeneration is God's 
plan for meeting and controlling all the bad 
heredities. Hence any discussion of the subject 
of hereditjr that should leave this out would 
be one-sided and shallow. It is impossible to 
form a correct estimate of man by leaving out 
his soul or spiritual interests, and his relation 
to God. Man as an animal only is the greatest 
possible enigma. He evidently was not made 
to be an animal. The brute creation were 
made to be animals and nothing else. They are 
endowed with the appropriate furnishings to 
make the animal life a complete success. But 
man as an animal is not a success. He pos- 
sesses magnificent soul furniture that an ani- 
mal does not need. A pig does not need a pa- 
lace to live in; a pig-sty with a mud-puddle in 
it suits his tastes quite as well. But man has 
the capacity to enjoy and appreciate a palace; 
he has soul thirsts and heart cravings that 
cannot be satisfied with a merely animal life. 
In fact, the soul thirsts after the Infinite. If 



HEREDITY. 109" 

the position taken in the first booklet, 'The 
Value of a Child," be correct — that man is des- 
tined, in God's plan, to occupy the very highest 
place, to become a u king and a priest unto 
God," a brother of the Lord Jesus, the "King of 
Kings," and to be associated with him in some 
important way in the government and control 
of the whole vast universe — then we can see 
adaptation perfect and complete, in the fur- 
nishings of the soul and its secret yearnings 
and aspirations. God made man for just such 
a place. 

But the mischief is, sin has come in as a dis- 
turbing element. It has played havoc with all 
the higher instincts and aspirations of the soul, 
by turning things upside down, putting the 
animal passions on top, and the higher spiritual 
nature underneath; subjecting the highest to 
the lowest; making the animal in us the king, 
and the angelic in us the subject. If a pig in 
a parlor would be out of place, rooting up the 
beautiful carpets, and making a dirty nest out 
of the magnificent tapestry, and having no use 
for the costly furniture — how much sadder the 
degeneration and stranger the confusion when 
a soul, created in the image and likeness of 
God, and fitted to think, and act, and feel like 
his Creator, is put in subjection to the appe- 
tites and passions that belong to the animal 
nature. All that is best and noblest in us is 
trampled in the dust and spoiled. 

Any study, therefore, of man that leaves sin 
out and the sad havoc it has made, and that 



110 HEREDITY. 

leaves God out and man's relation to Him, and 
God's plan of rescuing man from his slavery, 
and lifting him up to the position and place in 
the universe which he was created and fitted to 
occupy — would be worse than one-sided and 
shallow, it would be folly unspeakable. 

And yet it is not the purpose to discuss the 
question of regeneration, but simply to an- 
nounce in the briefest possible way God's plan 
for meeting and controlling all the bad hered- 
ities. And that is through his Word, backed 
up and made efficacious by the omnipotent 
Holy Spirit, God purposes to enable us to turn 
things upside down, or right side up again. 
That is, to put the animal in us down at the 
bottom, where it belongs, and the higher spir- 
itual nature on top and in control. Regenera- 
tion produces a restoration, a readjustment, a 
Tevolution, a successful rebellion against the 
old order of things by the setting up of a new 
government or Head, the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Jesus expresses it in Math. 18:3, "Except ye 
be converted and become as little children." 
■"Converted," literally "turned about," "face 
the other way." "You have been facing earth- 
ward, selfward, now turn about and face 
heavenward, Godward." "You have been your 
own master, doing as you pleased, and what 
you pleased to do has proved your ruin, because 
it has been the lower nature that has had to be 
pleased; now turn to God, allow him to direct 
and control you hereafter." 

Or to be a little more specific — heretofore it 



HEREDITY. Ill 

lias been avarice, perhaps, the love of money, 
that has occupied the throne and controlled all 
jour life. This one appetite has proven a ty- 
rant; it has hurried you out of bed in the morn- 
ing, and crowded you with the hardest kind of 
work all day long and often into the small 
hours of the night — 

"Gold many hunted, sweat and bled for gold, 
Waked all the night and labored all the day." [Pollock.] 

Or it may be a perverted appetite for strong 
drink that has ascended *the throne and now 
masters you, crushing out and trampling under 
foot everything beautiful or noble in your 
nature. Or possibly it may be a criminal pro- 
pensity inherited from your parents that has 
been fed and developed by untoward environ- 
ments until it has usurped the throne, and now 
controls your life. Or very likely it may be 
some passion or appetite not so degrading or 
destructive to others' interests, perhaps simply 
the love of pleasure, worldly pleasure that car- 
Ties with its gratification no injury to a fellow- 
heing, or one of those higher motives whose 
gratification has something of nobility in it as 
viewed by men — such as the ambition to be- 
come great, to secure high position and influ- 
ence, which controlled the Disciples when they 
<came to Jesus with the question, "Who (that is, 
which one of us) is to be the greatest in the 
kingdom of heaven?" 

Whatever the appetite or passion or natural 
affection, if it have usurped the throne, as- 

8 



112 HEREDITY. 

sumed the reins and now controls your life, 
Jesus says to you, "All wrong— except you face 
squarely about you can never enter heaven." 
You are in rebellion; you have allowed one of 
your own appetites or passions to climb up and 
usurp the place that belongs to God only. 
There is no hope for your future but to face 
about; turn away from your idol; self must be 
dethroned and God enthroned; you must here- 
after face toward God, put the reins in Hi& 
hands. Then He promises to bring order out 
of confusion, lift up the spiritual side of your 
nature into its true place, help you overcome 
the evil tendencies with which you were born, 
and fit you perfectly to occupy the high place in 
the coming ages for which you were created, 
and so richly endowed. 

This is God's plan for overcoming and con- 
trolling bad heredities. I have called it the 
"New Heredity." This may not be scientif- 
ically exact; and yet we are said in regenera- 
tion to "become partakers of the Divine na- 
ture"; and while, in regeneration, there is no 
new faculty or appetite created — there is a new 
tendency or desire created. Or perhaps it 
would be more exact to say that the spiritual 
appetites or thirsts with which we were born, 
and that had been covered up and crushed and 
smothered and starved until we scarcely knew 
we had them, are now by the help or the Holy 
Spirit uncovered and fed and started out into 
life and lifted into prominence so emphatically 
and completely that it verily seems a new crea- 



HEREDITY. 113 

tion; and we can accept Paul's statement — "If 
any man be in Christ lie is a new creature, old 
things have passed away, behold all things 
have become new." 

But the rationale, the how of conversion it 
was not the intention to discuss. Simply the 
great fact itself. God, in His infinite love for 
our fallen race, has thus planned our complete 
rescue and deliverance from the slavery of 
heredity. How complete this rescue may be- 
come, the whole history of Christianity for 
eighteen hundred years is in evidence. Thieves 
and robbers have been cured of their criminal 
tendencies, drunkards have been saved from 
the appetite for strong drink, avaricious men 
have been made benevolent, occupants of the 
slums have been lifted into respectability^ 
worthless lives have been made useful. In f act r 
there has never been found a soul sunk so low r 
with evil passions so far developed that the 
grace of God could not rescue and save. What 
the Spirit of God and the omnipotent Word 
could do for a "Jerry MacCauley" in New York, 
or for "Africanus," the hero of a hundred mur- 
ders in Africa, or for the whole tribe of the wild 
Mountain Men, the "Bed Karens" of Burmah, 
robbers by profession, bloodthirsty and cruel 
almost beyond conception — He is still able to 
do in every part of the world to-day; transform 
lives, "create men anew in Christ Jesus," quick- 
en men who "were dead in trespasses and in 
sins," "turn men from darkness to light and 
from the power of Satan unto God." 



114 heredity. 

Conclusion. 

Hence we believe we are fully justified in the 
conclusion that it is entirely safe to take into 
our home, if an earnest Christian home, any 
homeless child too young to take care of itself 
— if we take it in the name of Christ and for 
the sake of the child's future. 

If the child be very young, so young that un- 
desirable environments have not as yet 
fastened themselves upon its character, there 
will be no more danger of unfortunate devel- 
opments than with your own child. There will 
very likely be some unpleasant developments, 
;as time passes, which would never have ap- 
peared in your own child; but in other direc- 
tions there will be compensating advantages — 
.so that, all in all, neither the task nor the danger 
will be greater than if that child were your 
own flesh and blood. 

If the child you have received into your home 
be older, old enough to have been thoroughly 
spoiled by its degrading environments, or to 
have developed pernicious and perhaps crim- 
inal tendencies, inherited from its parents — 
you are still safe in receiving such a child; but 
only on condition that such child is led to the 
Lord Jesus Christ. Its sound conversion is the 
only reliable cure, God's own cure for evil 
heredities. I would be false both to the foster- 
parents and the child if I ventured to hold up 
any other hope. 

But I hear a hundred voices all at once ready 



HEREDITY. 115 

with the answer — "Aye, but there's the rub. 
What possible pledge have I that such a child, 
already spoiled, will be converted? Is it not 
tempting the fates to take chances where the 
risks are so great?" 

The certainty of happy results, if you care- 
fully follow God's plan in the training of that 
child, will be more fully and earnestly dis- 
cussed in the next booklet on "the Bible as an 
agent in the development of child character." 
But our discussion has already proceeded far 
enough to make some points clear — 

1. God loves this child: we mean this par- 
ticular child, already almost spoiled by its un- 
fortunate past, that you have now received 
into your home. It will be well to study this 
first proposition and pray over it until you can 
hear Jesus saying to you positively and di- 
rectly — "It is not the will of your Father which 
is in heaven that this individual child shall 
perish." 

2. If God loves this particular child then He 
wants it saved; and His desire for its salvation 
is sincere and deep-seated and intense, sa 
intense that He is willing to welcome to His 
assistance any effort or agency that promises 
success. So completely is this true that He 
has already said to you — "Whosoever will re- 
ceive one such child in My name receiveth Me." 
That is — "Whatever you undertake to do for 
that little child I will count it as done for Me, 
and done to Me; if you feed it you are feeding 
Me, if you clothe it you are clothing Me, if you 



116 HEREDITY. 

take it into your home and care for it as your 
own child you will get Me into your home and 
have the privilege of caring for Me as your 
own boy; every day you may feed Me and 
clothe Me and care for Me in the person of that 
homeless boy." 

Now I submit that if you carry out the con- 
ditions of that promise, receive that homeless 
child hot for what you can get out of it — a mer- 
cenary motive; and not simply because you 
liave a large place in your heart for a child and 
want a child to love — a natural motive; but 
if you take it from a Christian motive, "in His 
name" because you love Jesus and want to help 
Mm win that wayward child that he loves so 
much; and take it, too, because you have 
climbed up to His side and have begun to see 
things from his standpoint and therefore are 
able to discover an angel and more than an an- 
gel in that child, a king and a priest unto God, 
whose face shall shine as the sun, and whose 
position shall be among the noblest and 
grandest of all the intelligent beings in God's 
universe. If you take that child into your 
liome with such Christ-like motives, it will lead 
you to use every possible means that God per- 
mits a parent to use in the rescue and salva- 
tion of His own child, and with Jesus' own 
presence in your home, secured and insured 
because of your interest in that needy child — 
surely there can be very little danger of unfor- 
tunate results. 

But if you take the child from mercenary 



HEREDITY. ] 17 

motives, because you need a child of that age 
and size to work for you — or even if you take 
the child from the higher and holier motive 
of parental love, simply or chiefly because your 
heart yearns after a child, leaving the Lord 
Jesus and the future of the child out of the 
account — there will very likely come bitter 
disappointment and possibly absolute failure 
from the reception of a wayward child. Be- 
cause you cannot, in such a case, claim Jesus' 
presence and aid, since you have not fulfilled 
the conditions of that promise — "receive in My 
name." And then, too, not having clearly in 
mind the real value of that child, its wonderful 
future, you are not fortified with sufficient in- 
spiration and encouragement to surmount 
great obstacles, and to put in a large amount 
of time and patience in fitting that child for 
the magnificent place it is destined to occupy. 
I have become deeply interested recently in 
a fresh study of the first chapter of Luke, con- 
taining the account of the birth of John the 
Baptist, and the important and strange events 
connected therewith. John the Baptist became 
a great man. Jesus said of him, "Among them 
that are born of women there hath not arisen 
a greater prophet." He was distinguished 
above all the old Testament prophets in the 
iact that he was the acknowledged forerunner of 
the world's Messiah; and was the subject of 
several important old Testament predictions. 
It seemed very fitting, therefore, that his birth 
should have been attended with special marks 



118 HEREDITY. 

of honor — be announced by the angel Gabriel 
— three physical miracles connected there- 
with — strange illumination by the Holy Spirit, 
and wonderful words spoken by the mother 
Elizabeth, by her cousin Mary, and especially 
by the Father Zacharias on the occasion of the 
circumcising and naming of the child; no won- 
der the entire community was astonished, and 
that — 

"Fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and alL 
these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill- 
country of Judea. 

"And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts,, 
saying, What manner of child shall this be!" Verses 65, 66. 

We can easily imagine that the father and 
mother were very proud of their boy; and more,, 
for they were a thoroughly consecrated pair, 
we can easily imagine on their part a con- 
sciousness of grave responsibility in the train- 
ing of a boy with such a remarkable future 
before him. Not for the world will they omit 
any duty prescribed in the Old Testament 
Scriptures that has to do with the proper train- 
ing of so important a life. How carefully they 
will read every verse that has any relation 
whatever to this their great life's mission — the 
fitting of that boy for his responsible place. 

In their case, of course, there was no chance 
for doubt or question as to the final outcome, 
for had not the angel Gabriel plainly said: 

"And thou shalt hare joy and gladness; and many shall 
rejoice at his birth. 



HEEEDITY. 11& 

"For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall 
drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled 
with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. 

"And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the 
Lord their God. 

"And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of: 
Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and 
the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a 
people prepared for the Lord." Verses 14-17. 

How encouraging such promises must have 
been; what a constant inspiration to those 
parents — "We are training a boy that shall be 
'the prophet of the Highest/ the 'Elias that 
was for to come/ " How completely and con- 
stantly the thought of his future must have 
entered into every part of their work for that 
boy, lifting them over hardships, making toils 
and sacrifices pleasant pastimes. Ordinary 
parental affection was overshadowed by the 
sublime consciousness of the future; or rather 
their clear views of his future, their thorough 
consecration to God, and intense love for their 
own people, the Jewish nation, with whose 
best interests their boy's future was closely 
identified — all these motives combined to intensify 
parental love and increase their carefulness and 
add zest to everything they did for their boy. 
He was undoubtedly a constant care to those 
old people; very likely exceedingly trying to 
their patience at times; puzzling problems 
would often arise as to parental responsibility, 
and as to how far his childish whims or physi- 
cal appetite should be indulged. And yet con- 
stantly overshadowing all, as a golden halo r 



120 HEREDITY. 

would be the pleasing and inspiring conscious 
ness — "We are not toiling in vain; there is to 
be a glorious outcome for all this anxiety and 
labor and care; we are training the Harbinger 
of the world's Messiah." 

Dear parent, foster-parent or natural parent, 
will you allow me to whisper a word in your 
ear? After the Lord Jesus had said: "Among 
them that are born of women there hath not 
arisen a greater prophet than John the Bap- 
tist/' He added with wondrous emphasis: "Not- 
withstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of 
heaven is greater than he." That little child in 
your care, now such a "troublesome comfort," 
as one mother puts it, such a perplexing prob- 
lem, if received in His dear name, and trained 
for Him, will become a greater than John the 
Baptist — not a "forerunner" of the world's 
Messiah, but an own brother; not a prophet 
alone, but a king and a priest as well; not to 
enjoy a brief ministry of a few months only, 
flashing as a meteor for a day and then going 
out in darkness, but shining as a star forever 
and ever; not exerting a brief influence in one 
small nation, but sitting by the side of the 
great king upon his throne of universal do- 
minion with face shining as the sun, he shall 
become known to every intelligent being in 
God's universe, and every world that rolls in 
space shall sometime during the countless ages 
of eternity feel the inspiration of his presence 
and receive some blessing from his existence. 

And there are not wanting abundant prom- 



'heredity. 121 

Ises of future honor and glory greater by far 
and more numerous than came to Zacharias 
and Elizabeth from the lips of the angel Gab- 
riel. For while it may not be my privilege to 
see the angel and listen to his voice as he an- 
nounces the birth of the homeless waif that 
has come under my roof, yet a greater than 
the angel Gabriel has said, "Take heed that ye 
despise not one of these little ones, for I say 
unto you that in heaven their angels do always 
behold the face of My Father which is in 
heaven." That is, while John the Baptist had 
one angel delegated to announce his birth, this 
child which I have received has "angels" (more 
than one) delegated, not simply to announce 
his birth, but to be a perpetual bodyguard, here 
on earth "bearing him up in their hands, lest 
at any time he should dash his foot against a 
stone," and up there before the throne holding 
the place of peculiar and special honor — "al- 
ways beholding the face of My Father which 
is in heaven." 

It is true, we are not permitted, as Zacharias 
was, to see any of these angels or hear their 
voices, or have any of their words recorded in 
God's written Book where all the generations 
of men are permitted to read them. But we 
should not forget, there is another Bible being 
written now, the Book of God's providences, 
the History of Kedemption. God's central plan 
for the entire universe — and in this larger 
Book that will be read in the ages to come by 
•every intelligent being in the universe, will 



122 HEREDITY. 

probably be found an intensely interesting 
record of the birth of this homeless waif, the 
delegation of angels that attended his birth,, 
the announcement of the important event in 
heaven, the selection and designation of his 
bodyguard, the history of their ministries to 
that child, of its chequered history during 
childhood and youth, how it was abandoned 
by its parents who knew nothing of its value,- 
how God saw a priceless jewel in it and so took 
it up and provided for it, how you received it in. 
His name and cared for it and loved it, how it 
received the truth and was finally prepared 
through great tribulation for the glory that is 
to follow. 

O father, mother, it is simply blind unbelief 
that hides from your eyes and ears the sublime 
vision and the inspiring words of promise re- 
lating to that child whose eternal interests are 
intrusted to you. A greater than John the 
Baptist you are permitted to train for a posi- 
tion of trust and honor such as "Eye hathb 
not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it en- 
tered into the heart of man." If the good man 
Zacharias was struck dumb because he failed 
to believe the words of the angel Gabriel, what 
shame and confusion and loss when a greater 
than Gabriel, Jesus Himself speaks to us, and 
the whole Bible is filled with the plainest pos- 
sible promises to those who feed and clothe 
and shelter one of the least of these. What 
boots it to you that the parents of John the 
Baptist were good, nice, respectable people,. 



HEREDITY. 123 

^vhile the parents of the abandoned waif you 
-are permitted to care for are the very opposite, 
the very chief of sinners? If it required a 
physical miracle to secure a John the Baptist 
from parents physically unfitted, because of 
age, to bear a child, is it any more a miracle or 
a harder thing for God to secure a "greater 
than John the Baptist," an heir of glory from 
parents morally unfitted for such a glorious 
service? "Where sin abounded grace did much 
more abound." God seems to take delight in 
"making the wrath of man praise Him." The 
lower the depths and the viler the pit, the more 
illustrious the grace. It was the "chief of sin- 
ners," the bitterest of all the enemies of the 
Church, the mad persecutor, Saul, that became 
the most useful Apostle. So to pick up out of 
the slums an abandoned waif and put it into a 
Christian family to be trained for God and 
heaven is a grander work, a work that illus- 
trates what God can do, and the infinite sweep 
-of His love, far more completely than to select 
a child from an intelligent and consecrated 
Christian home. And because it is a grander 
work, and one that more completely reveals 
the infinite depths of God's love, therefore 
Jesus offers to bestow peculiar honor and re- 
ward upon the person or the family who has 
faith enough and consecration enough to at- 
tempt such a service for Him, and says: 

"Whosoever shall receive one such little child in my name, 
srcceiveth me." 

"RECEIVETH ME!" 



ADDENDA- 



After the first forms of this book had gone to press, we- 
received from the Rev. E. P. Savage, of Minn., the following 
interesting account of the incident mentioned on p. 35, and 
we think our readers will agree with us that the closing 
sentence is a very fitting finale to this w T hole discussion. 

"One Sunday morning in the Central Park M. E. Church, 
of St. Paul, the gifted pastor introduced Rev. E. P. Savage, 
Superintendent of the Minnesota Children's Home Society, 
and stated that he had the deepest interest in such work, for 
he himself had been a homeless boy at one time, wandering 
about not knowing where to lay his head or to find meat to- 
eat. But that in the good providence of God he had been 
taken into a good Christian family and now lived to proclaim 
the glad tidings of Salvation to the perishing. 

"During the address Mr. Savage told the story of Gov. 
Burke of North Dakota as the Governor had told it to him: 
'My mother died when I was a baby, my father when I was 
four years old. I was taken by The New York Children's 
Aid Society and cared for till I was eight years old and then 
sent West to Indiana. I went into the army as a drummer 
boy and now I am Governor of North Dakota. If there are 
any people in the world for whom I have the profoundest 
respect it is those that will care for the homeless children/ 

"At the close of the service the pastor called upon a gentle- 
man to come forward, and introduced Governor Burke him- 
self to the congregation. The Governor gave the superin- 
tendent a check for $50 and said I wish I could make it 
$5,000; I owe all I am in the world to such work. 

"How many worthy men whom their fellow-citizens 
delight to honor have thus been saved for humanity." 



lUl 25 1898 



